


You Ain't Alone

by FancyLadySnackCakes



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Angst, F/M, Hate Sex, Making Mistakes, Mutual Pining, One-Sided Attraction, Resolved Sexual Tension, Romance, Slow Burn, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-29
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-20 16:38:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9500411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FancyLadySnackCakes/pseuds/FancyLadySnackCakes
Summary: No, she'd decided months ago that she would live out the rest of her days as a ghoul. John had walked her through it. She’d outlined every detail in her tight scrawl inside a little journal in her pack. Even Deegan in his own way had told her what to expect. There was no reason for her to be smoothing out rather than falling apart.But she was...





	1. September

She was old and gray when she did it, expecting to look unrecognizable when it was all said and done. Part of that assumption still rang true but not in the way she'd considered. Nora came with all the supplies John had told her to pack - all those little things only a ghoul would know and only a man like John would disclose to her. He had seemed...excited at the prospect when she had told him. His offer to join her seemed rushed so she'd politely declined, but told him he'd the first she'd visit when it was all said and done.

 

“When is it suppose to work?” she asked Edward Deegan in a less than stable tone. Being in her late sixties and still expected to do all the things she did in her twenties and more left her irritable on the best of days. She'd had an unnerving pain in her chest the past few weeks as well and part of her vitriol was based in fear as was her norm. This, she had told herself, would at least keep her from dropping dead of a heart attack or something even less predictable... 

 

“Soon enough. It took a few hours for me to noticed the first signs,” Edward tells her, sitting across from her in the foray with two untouched glasses of fine scotch. He told her it was for her final toast after she shot him a withering look. She quipped back that it would taste just as shitty with or without her nose. To that comment, Deegan remained silent, watching her indifferently. The old ghoul always unnerved her, and now that she was wrinkled and frail he seemed even less smitten by her than he had been when she was beautiful. 

 

“How does it feel?” She asked him, voice wavering somewhat. She swallowed to get some honey back in her throat but it left her feeling parched. Suddenly, the scotch seemed like a good idea. Nora reached over - hand shaking frustratingly - and took a long swallow. It burnt, but she bared it and let herself sink back into the couch. Her back ached but from what John told her, that wouldn't bother her much longer. 

 

Deegan watched her and only after she settled back did he open his mouth, “It'll only be uncomfortable for a-”

 

“No,” she stopped him, somehow less biting and more tired than anything, “Not the transformation. I wanna know how it feels to outlive everyone you care about.”

 

Edward Deegan was silent for a long time until he gave her a bitter, almost hateful grin before downing his scotch in one swallow, “Guess you'll find out soon enough.”

 

It was a cruel remark and though she scowled at him, she knew it held none of the venom she wanted. She had become less intimidating in her old age and when Piper was alive it had been a running joke once she turned fifty that her bark was just as weak as her bite. Thinking about the old girl made her feel wistful again. Becoming a ghoul wouldn’t take those feelings away - it wouldn’t make the death of her friends or the coming end of them any easier. In fact, their deaths might hurt more because of this, but they had all agreed that if she had the chance then she needed to take it. So much had been accomplished under her leadership and it couldn’t stop now.

 

_ "Gotta keep the good times rolling, Blue…" _

 

Nora sniffed; old sentiments making her sappy and sad and they were all pointless because soon she’d be immortal and everyone else would have their own farewell for her to remember and chew on.

 

‘Guess you’ll find out soon enough,’ she repeated to herself. That was no kind of answer, but did she deserve one really? She'd been a crotchety old bitch the moment she waltz into the manor. Demanding the serum in all honesty. Though, to be fair, Jack had never shut up about it. His offers had become especially pushy since she'd started graying at forty. 

 

They sat, her and Deegan in uncomfortable silence for a couple more hours before she started feeling jittery - the feeling not unlike agitation, but more so. A manic energy, much like a hit of psycho made her fingers buzz and her left foot start tapping.

 

John had told her she might feel ‘fucked out of her mind’, in his own colorful words. He told her that it'd hit her hard when she started noticing the changes, but she was already as rough looking as a ghoul to some degree anyway. It couldn't have been all that bad. Across from her she looked at Deegan and thought he looked more attractive than her right now.

 

The clock on the far right wall, by the front door, struck noon by the time she started itching. Deegan watched her emotionlessly as though nothing was showing. She felt her fingers glide through her hair, a couple strands snagging in her fingers. But it wasn't the loss of a few strands of hair that concerned her. No, it was their color. Brown?

 

“Is this to be expected?” she asked, her voice coming out smoother than it had in years.  That wasn't right - it was supposed to be grating. Worse than it was now for sure, but not better. And the color of the strands still between her fingers - they were richer in color. The stark white had gone dark. 

 

“What's happening?” she demanded.

 

“You're changing,” Deegan reminded her as if this had already be rehearsed a dozen times; as though her panic wasn't warranted. 

 

“No-” Nora sat up, ignoring the sharp pain in her hip from getting up too quickly, “no this isn't what he told me would happen. John said-”

 

“Hancock? And you believed him?” Deegan almost looked amused, but he wasn't really. He rested his ghoulified hands on his knees, sank back into the couch cushions and watched her with detached interest. It was as if he'd seen this many, many times. And then...it clicked and she felt suddenly very foolish for not picking up on it sooner. She wasn’t turning into a ghoul...

 

The secretive looks between Edward and Jack that morning that got her goat more than she should admit at her age, abruptly made sense. That bewildered expression the women gave her when the situation was revealed to them at the top of the stairs, out of her limited hearing range. That too made sense to her. They all knew something she hadn’t, but she knew it now.

 

Nora stood there in her grubby work clothes, hunched slightly despite how the ache in her back didn't ache so much any longer and recalled Piper’s comment all those years ago about the likeness between herself and one of the old portraits here.

 

_ “I can see it now! 'Woman Out of Time. Hero of The Commonwealth. Descendant from Cabot Family Ruin!’ That, Blue, would make a great headline.” _

 

No, she'd decided months ago that she would live out the rest of her days as a ghoul. John had walked her through it. She’d outlined every detail in her tight scrawl inside a little journal in her pack. Even Deegan in his own way had told her what to expect. There was no reason for her to be smoothing out rather than falling apart.

 

As she stood there, knees shaking, she ran through Deegan's words and found them hollow and open and void of detail. He had told her what to expect alright, but it had been this...not what ‘she’ had expected. Nora felt cheated and something else that wasn’t what she foresaw; anticipation maybe?

 

Nora looked at the back of her shaking hands, determining that the liver spots that had looked so jarring were certainly gone and the deep blue veins spidering over her tendons were fading around a layer of plush flesh. It wasn’t that this change was more horrifying than the one she had thought would happen. No. No, it wasn’t that growing younger was worse than peeling and parts of her falling off. It was that she hadn’t prepared herself for this.

 

“You lied to me,” she seethed at Deegan as he sat still on the couch, staring up at her with a heavy tilt to the corner of his mouth. His attitude made sense to her now, he was jealous of her. Displeased that she could take the same serum he did and instead of coming apart like he did she was shedding her age and regressing. She was taking back her life rather than making compromises. Nora understood it now, but it didn’t ebb her outrage any less. 

 

“You bastard.” That was the last she said before her blood pressure shot up and she dissolved into darkness. 

 

\--------------

 

The second biggest Minuteman settlement, nestled in the center of the Boston Common - it’s open market cornering Swan’s old pond - welcomed her, but they didn’t recognize her. She felt like she was in some waking nightmare. Some, she knew, would kill hordes of innocents to be granted what she had now. 

 

Her skin was smooth again. The ache in her chest was gone. She even jogged alongside her Brahmin caravan rather than settle herself on it like the decrepit old woman she’d been. Nora looked around her, at the men and women she called friends and none of them recognized her. She saw them all so clearly as if for the first time without the fog of her cataracts blurring it all out. She’d nearly forgotten how rich and fertile the commonwealth was and how easily she had let her physical distress affect her outlook.

 

The years had convinced her the world still needed her - that the world was still dark and grim, but as she looked out across the community she’d helped build with her own two hands, she realized it wasn’t anything like that. People were laughing and smiling much like they had when she was a young girl. These pockets of people spread out in thick clusters from the ports to the mountains.

 

Her walk back home had been filled with walking caravans, chattering people and all the noises that caused. There was no point for her to be alive...she saw it now, clear as day. No one recognized her here - no one needed her anymore.

 

She walked across the cobblestones, looking around her at the open windows in the Commons, some settlers were hanging up wet laundry and others were watching the market from up high.  

 

Nora didn’t feel like this was real until she’d walked all the way through the Commons and found herself standing on the dilapidated Skybridge overlooking the dazzling lights of Goodneighbor. They were bright - so fucking bright. She felt a headache coming on, but after leaving the Cabot House with nothing hurting she almost welcomed the discomfort. The pain of living had become such a part of her that she felt a little lonely without it. She’d forgotten what it felt like to walk without her ankles clicking or her knees needling. 

 

At her hip, she palmed her magnum. The old uneven metal was soothing to touch. Where she was changed, polished like new, her gun was as weathered as she was...or had been. It should have brought her some comfort but it didn’t really, not when she thought about it. 

 

Part of her thought to jump over the railing and grapple her way down the State House, bust open John’s balcony door and shock the daylights out of him, but despite how she looked and how she felt, she was also tired. Mentally exhausted. 

 

It felt like she was still walking in a dream after the hours since she’d woken up on the Cabot couch with a mean smirking Deegan guarding over her.

 

Nora felt strange recalling the way he’d lingered on her face, those bloodshot eyes roving over her unflattering garb as if he wanted to see what was underneath. She’d excused herself to their bathroom, disrobed and just stared at herself in the untarnished mirror for what felt like forever. The most shocking thing to her wasn’t the high curve of her breasts or the gentle slope of her belly, nor was it the short brown hair between her legs. No that was expected. What was most shocking was the absence of her c-section scar. As if someone had erased it. It was gone along with all the other scars and blemishes she'd received by simply surviving. 

 

There was no proof left that she'd been a mother.

 

Nora leaned her elbows on the cool metal railing, looking down into a busy, midday in Goodneighbor and frowned. After half an hour she took back her earlier thought about welcoming the headache, it had soured into something near debilitating and so, with a swallow and two crushing fists, she made her way back to Boston Commons. 

 

John would be there tomorrow if she still felt like scaring the shit out of him.

 

Besides, she didn’t need his charity anymore. She may very well look like the Nora he first met, younger even now, but she wasn’t desperate for shelter. There were beds for those that needed them in Boston Commons; for drifters that didn’t want to sleep outside in the streets and that was where she found herself.

 

Nora recognized Amelia Gagnon behind her blue painted desk; a short, thin girl covered in freckles. She stood with the vigor of a chem addict in the middle of a good high, but Nora had never judged her on her habit. To each their own. 

 

Amelia’s eyes lit up at the sight of her and for a horrified second Nora thought she’d recognized her, but what came out of her mouth wasn’t what Nora had feared.

 

“Well hello there, stranger! Name is Amelia and if you’re looking for a place to hang your head for a couple nights then look no further. We have two bunks in the back open and dinner is served at five-thirty. I get it from Capt. Baird and he always makes something real-”

 

Nora’s headache tuned the girl out, but it didn’t matter. She’d heard her welcome speech before and with a tight smile she nodded and nodded again and then let the girl show her to a bunk - bottom mattress with old clean sheets on it. It took five seconds for Nora to shake Amelia’s hand, smile and fall into the bed and just as quickly into sleep.

 

A strange, itchy feeling followed her into a dreamless sleep. What if she woke up an old woman again or worse...a ghoul? As much as she hated this, she didn’t want to wake up anyway but how she fell asleep. The tender idea of starting a new felt...good. With this, she could give herself a new name, a new story and find someplace that needed her. 

  
As she slept she was oblivious of a large ghoul watching her from the windows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading.
> 
> I was planning on posting this as a whole but it got away from me and it's become more of a story than a one-shot. Please, let me know what you think of this if you have the time. Liberal creative use of the serum seen in Cabot House quest for sure. This story will be completed soon since I'm basically done with it. Just need to Beta the fuck out of it. <3


	2. September-November

Curie gave her a crushing hug when she recognized her finally. It seemed the safest bet to introduce herself to the synth first. She was always vivacious and eccentric, but her mind was still clinical and literal. Emotions wouldn't distract Curie from what was happening, at least that's what Nora had told herself when she got herself through the crowds of Goodneighbor patrons dressed to the gills in gray and some heavy shades. She felt absurd, much like that time she'd put the Shroud’s clothes on to play-pretend across half the Commonwealth. 

“Oh! Mlle Nora, regardez-tu!”

Nora patted her shoulder softly; if not a bit cold. She had never been much for affection or physical touch but she decided under the circumstances it was reasonable. It wasn't every day this sort of thing happened after all. 

“Yes, Curie...it’s me,” she replied, ignoring whatever the hell she sprouted in French, knowing she'd clarify in English if it had been important. As it turned out it wasn't. Curie released her pointedly, looking her over with a click of her tongue. The methodical swipe of her eyes made Nora feel nostalgic.

“Oh, surely you must tell me how you became this way! I must know, please - Oh, please you must.”

The Memory Den had changed little over the years. Still the same as the day she'd first stepped inside after the bombs. Before that? She couldn't remember very well. She'd only visited the place once on a school trip, and she'd been more concerned with hitting the State House so she could snap illegal pictures of the display cases; filled to the brim with revolutionary relics. 

“I'll tell you, but let me sit down for a bit first,” she pleaded, patting Curie’s arm until the bright-faced synth finally let her go, only to twist her around with an arm encompassing her waist before pulling her elegantly to a lounge chair by her terminals. 

“Pardonne-moi,” she gushed, spinning Nora in place before lowering her to a soft couch. Nora's head spun, but it was mild compared to how her head used to swim upon rising and sitting. Curie sat beside her, legs folded and palms just as so; waiting patiently for her to speak. It suddenly felt very claustrophobic in the open room. 

Nora observed the curtained walls and noticed the empty loungers, “Where are all the customers?”

“Ah, ‘tis a frightful thing. I was repairing one of ‘ze loungers and must have wired it wrong, for the rest of them went kaput! It will take a day to get them running again.” Curie said all of this will a radiant smile. She looked as pleased as Nora could have imagined. It didn't help that she felt tongue-tied and off balance in her new skin. Everything was different and yet nothing had changed here. She tried, desperately so, to pretend it was forty years ago and she were in her late twenties again, but that didn't work either because she was younger than that now…

“Are you ready to talk now?”

No, she wanted to say, but she'd come here to talk and so she did just that. With a great breath of air, Nora told her about her morning a week ago, with the serum and the Cabot’s lies and how she'd been sleeping in her own erected flophouse like a common drifter. Nora recanted all that and didn't cry, but she wanted to. The serum hadn't just altered her physically. She'd found in the passing days that the hormones of an early twenties-old woman were also swimming around in her head; turning her thoughts upside down at times. 

She held in a leveling breath and turned to Curie with a frown, “I'd like to talk to Mayor Hancock, but I admit I'm afraid to go see him like this.” 

What she really meant was that she wanted a hit of something to calm her down and John would have that and more in spades in the pockets of his red frock but Nora couldn't muster the courage to enter his State House office looking like this. She needed him to give her a charismatic smirk, shake up a shooter of jet for her and give her a chaser of grape mentat flavored vodka.

John would expect a ghoul and instead, she was younger looking now than when he first met her. It seemed strange to go to him like this. Better he be brought to her... 

“I zee,” Curie replied, letting a thick twitch of French inhabit the words. Her sharp eyes shifted robotically before looking back at her with a crinkle of a smile. “I can go get him for you! Tu, wait here.”

Nora waited and waited and eventually, she felt the apprehension dissolve. She shrugged off the old trench coat and laid her glasses on the folded gray polyester. When she stood up from the couch it was with little effort. No rush of blood to her head - no pop in her joints. It almost felt like floating as she walked slowly around the room, mesmerized by the clarity with which she saw the world again. The curved glass hatch of one memory lounger reflected her distorted features back at her, but she could still make herself out in the mess; dark brown hair swirled along the glass, mixing with her fair pinkish skin and the soft green of her blouse. She was wearing a dirty shirt and some cutoff shorts courtesy of whatever fit her back in the Boston Commons shelter and when she itched the back of her thigh she was reminded how short they were. 

It would suit her luck well that as she was crossing the room to cover herself up with the trencher, Curie dashed down the hall with a wild looking John Hancock close on her tail. 

Nora froze; lips parted. It wasn't often she'd found herself at a loss for words these days. Her old age had given her a sharp tongue even if people thought her mind was fading. But no...she wasn't old anymore and if there had been any doubt about that John gave her a certain look that confirmed it outright.

Curie beamed, threading her fingers together at her stomach as John blinked from the door jam, looking like he saw a ghost. Nora noticed something unfamiliar but old, very old cross his features but she couldn't identify it and when his eyes lowered to rake up her body she forgot to find a name for it. 

“John,” she greeted, keeping her voice steady despite how exposed she felt right then. 

“You zee! It ‘tis her, just as I said!”

John Hancock was speechless and that would have amused her but she didn't need nor want a thunderstruck ghoul in her midst. She needed John to be her rock right now - she needed him to joke and roll his r’s just to fuck with her. He needed to make a crass comment soon or she'd break. This was too strange for her and he was only making it more so. 

After a minute of silence, she thinned her lips and growled, “Say something already you bumbling dolt!”

“Fuck me.” Was her only reply until she threatened to walk out. Nora was halfway down the hall with her trench coat and glasses in her arms before John nearly threw himself against the wall, shouting at her. 

“Wait! Now-” he swallowed and she gave him a tired look from down the hallway, waiting for him to gather whatever thoughts he had about this situation. For all she knew he was high as hell and trying to process this. It made her feel like apologizing, but only for a moment. Instead, she crossed her arms and ignored the way his eyes widened, unable it seemed, to stop taking her in from bottom to top; lingering in the usual places that made her impatient. 

“Alright, yeah. I ain't trippin’ but fuck, Nora. This ain't something you spring on a man at three in the morning.”

"It's twelve-thirty. In the afternoon,” she corrected him, almost smiling as he rubbed his scalp under the tricorn, rolling his eyes in thought. He looked like he was on the back end of a bender the most she looked at him.

“Must've been thinkin’ about yesterday. Gotta lay off the jet again…”

“John,” she repeated, pulling his attention back to reality. Something darker in his eyes refocused and he was then, finally walking towards her, supporting himself on the wall, still staring at her like she was...well changed. Different. Young again.

“Christ, look at you.”

Nora smirked this time and didn't bother fighting it, “Curie said something similar.”

“Bet she did,” he mused; eyes running around her face as if he'd never seen her before, “How'd this happen? I thought you were ready to go ghoul but this ain't a side effect of rad juice. ‘Least not the kind I've dabbled in.”

“Eloquent as usual, John,” she informed him. With a tight breath, she tried to smile while asking in no small voice, “I need to get high.”

“Oh yeah?”

She picked at the trench coat in her arms, “My heart can take it now and I've been sleeping next to an old man with bad gas for about five nights in a row.”

“I wanna pull that sentence apart, but I respect an ol’ gals wishes. Let's get you situated, sweetheart. Maybe after a few hits, you’ll regal me with the juicy details ‘cause this is a cluster fuck worth takin' in.”

“No,” she grabbed at him, holding his arm in a spotless palm, staring with wide electric eyes at him. At the touch she noticed John's gaze soften and his breathing pick up. She didn't want to go to his office just yet. She didn't want to pass by James and the Green Brothers. Nora didn't even want to pass by them in her glasses and trencher and for them to mistake her for one of John’s flings either. “Get me high here first. Do me this mercy, please.”

“Hell, you know I'd never say no to you, but ya gotta face the music sometime,” he told her this, though he was pulling her back down the hallway away from the door - pulled her across the room and back behind the stage to what used to be a dressing room and was now a storage area. He sat down on a crate across from a pile of rolled up rugs. It was there Nora sat and took each and every procured chem he handed her. 

By the time he was done with her she was good and fully doped. And for the first time since Deegan had watched her crumble, she felt normal again.

\--------------

There may have been a brief period of time in her life, back when she had high hopes for it, that she had enjoyed sex. Back when she was a teenager and it was something new and unexplored, Nora had...well, enjoyed was a flattering word. It was more like she may have entertained it as a positive. It didn't take more than a few awkward and unpleasurable encounters that she realized it was just another chore to be done. A thing that was expected and subsequently offered when necessary.

Well, that was unfair, sometimes it was mildly enjoyable. Sometimes the moment would correspond with a brief surge of lust and she'd enjoy it enough to not feel robbed afterward. Nate had enjoyed it after all and she’d loved him. So she would smile and giggle and roll over and let him enjoy himself. 

The intimacy could be pleasant, but she'd never been a very romantic or intimate type of woman anyway and most times the sweaty sticky feeling would ruin any desire to be near another equally sweaty and sticky person. This nature of hers fit just as well in this war-torn world as it did in the old one. No one bothered her about sex, though. No one expected it of her and if someone wanted it when she didn’t then she was free to stub them out as she saw fit.

Though people's expectations of her in that regard had changed, people were still as eager to fuck as they’d ever been in her time. Even with so much else to concern themselves with people still risked it all for a moment of pleasure; a lover to hold in the dark. She couldn't understand it. The risks of pregnancy seemed hellish when there was nothing to ward against it - not to mention that lack of hygiene and disease she’d witnessed through her many years. Sure, when she thought about it long enough she did indeed miss Nate. She'd been happy in her own way. She'd loved him even if it was in a distant sort of way. 

Nora thought about this sometimes. So, when John asked her if she’d felt alone, she almost grinned at the lunacy of that question.

No, she had told him instead; lying, ignoring the dashed look she got from him in turn. Those bottomless blacks of his glinting under an ugly half-dead bulb of light; knowing. She didn't need people in that way, she reminded herself. Nora didn't want for love - for companionship or silly notions like sexual intimacy. Over and over again until the words sounded strange, she told herself those things, pretending she was fine.

It wasn't until two months later, after that conversation, that Nora sat in her empire - her seat in the Boston Commons secured one again, looking into her vanity mirror as she willed the wrinkles to come back. Things had been more painful, but they had also been predictable when she was old.

People stared at her less.

The serum, though getting rid of scars, wrinkles and blemishes never got rid of the crease between her eyes when she frowned and that bruised look from lack of sleep had yet to fade even though she looked better than she did when she was thawed. There was no reason for her to hold onto her vanity - to count on her good looks, which had only served to put her into added trouble over the years. It was days like this that made her grimace, wondering if she’d made the right choice - if it would have been easier if she’d just died instead of this. She’d have less needless things to worry about for sure. 

Though, nothing was stopping her from fucking around. It wasn’t as though there was a lack of willing persons eager to be her lover…Deegan, as shocking as it was, would come to her more than willingly if she so much as mentioned it. 

Nora curled her fingers into the porcelain sink imagining herself bent over and fucked by the stacked ghoul.

She frowned, swallowed a hiccup of bile and thought back to the cold fall morning when Deegan had watched her from across the Cabot couch - that nasty look on his face as it happened. He was a bastard...but despite the visceral reaction she’d just had, the thought wasn’t unappealing like many other perceived encounters had been. She had a long time to think about it, Nora figured. 

She swore she’d died for a little while back then - that Edward Deegan might have even expected her to, to some degree, but she didn’t and he’d been hovering around her in his own way for awhile now. Biding his time.

It gave her a convenient excuse to keep within the settlements she’d erected - to keep working for the cause just as she’d done since the beginning. Not that she complained - not really. Nora may have been high strung and uptight at times, but she prided herself on being selfless. Always was. Most said it was her best quality after her looks, which had faded as time had gone by. 

She agreed, seeing a world that could be better than it was then. Never missing her looks and the looks she got because of them. The worst part was she had to watch everyone die and know she’d watch more come and go. There were new friends, of course, sons and daughters of her good friends. Deegan and the Cabots remained as always. Nick still made the trip out to visit when he had time... 

Nora hadn’t seen him since that morning with Deegan, though.

She looked into her mirror again and thumbed her lower lip, wondering if he’d heard through the grapevine yet or not. He’d have something pacifying to say to her; something witty and comforting. 

John Hancock, of course, had never left his post, still an honest and dear friend - someone she could talk to as the years passed. Danse had disappeared thirty years ago, though she rarely thought of him. Deacon vanished in a similar fashion as Danse, though she’d sworn she’d seen him in disguise once or twice as she’d gotten up there in her years. 

She missed Preston and Piper the most. Preston, who had died in the middle of a firefight - a gunshot to the chest that never clotted properly. He’d died in her arms...

Outside her window, she could see Edward Deegan leaning against a granite post, smoking a cigar. He was watching her, looking in on her as she stood in her bathroom with nothing but a tank top on. His presence was unnerving, but she wasn’t stubborn enough to ignore that the idea of inviting him inside wasn’t running through her mind. He’d at least scratch an inch that probably needed scratching. Nora was, however, too stubborn to do so. Let him rot outside for all she cared.

Somewhere in Sanctuary, Codsworth was sweeping the sidewalk; buzzing like a heavy bloatfly in the summer sun, she knew. She should visit Sanctuary sometime, Nora thought as she turned away from her mirror, not caring that Edward Deegan had a good view of her naked cunt as she walked across the room to her bed. 

Just pack the bags, hitch a ride with Bruce and his caravan and take a long vacation in Sanctuary.

Nora thought about it long and hard before pulling on some jeans that were too loose around her waist. She hadn’t bought many clothes since the serum and she refused to wear those shorts again. She liked her old lady clothes. They were familiar and all it took was a belt to keep them on her hips. It attracted less attention as well, which she liked.

In Goodneighbor it would be easy to pretend she’d never gotten older, never thrown herself back into a younger body. Maybe she’d bring back some cigars for Nick on her way back. Maybe she’d get high and fuck if the mood grabbed her...most of all she wanted to kick her heels up on that ancient desk in Hancock’s office and pretend she was back in her old shoes, in her old vault suit and the both of them were just getting to know each other.

The faces that she’d gotten used to that had begun looking at her differently were starting to disturb her. It felt like time had stopped moving around her. How those pre-war ghouls did it for two-hundred years, Nora couldn't figure. She was having a hard time nearing seventy…

Lonely, yeah. Maybe she was lonely. 

She watched curiously as Edward Deegan approach her window, rapping the pane of glass with his knuckles; eyes hot. So maybe she felt a little alone and maybe he knew that too. At least, Nora thought with a frown, she knew how to fix it.


	3. November and December

Fourteen days later she was standing in front of the newly installed Goodneighbor welcome sign. Nora stared and couldn't help but laugh at herself. The ‘G’ was composed of over a hundred flashing bulbs. Some poor bastard had to rewire old fluorescent letters with new gas to made up the rest of the multi-colored letters. Gaudy, she thought with a wry smile, but still with a touch of nostalgia. Nothing but the best for the world’s last bastion of hooliganism, John Hancock.

\--”Gotta make sure there’s still a place for miscreants and misfits with all the washin’ you been doing to my side of town.”--Nora remembers John telling her that across his desk of chems nearly twenty years ago. 

She’d and about thirteen Minutemen had taken back a part of the ruins just east of Goodneighbor, put in some settlers, turrets, and brahmin. Today it was its own community that had built up barricades along the city - walls of steel and cement that kept everyone much safer than they would have been otherwise. However, aside from the lone hungry deathclaw, most other violences had run off to Nuka World and never came back. 

Nora surveyed the outer wall of Goodneighbor and felt the corner of her lips twitch upwards. She shouldered her pack, enjoying the heavy weight on her shoulder - a shoulder that could support so much carry on now - and breathed it all in.

The waving torch lights that flickered back and forth on either side of the sign was a nice touch, she thought, before opening the doors. A bit over the top, but it suited the place perfectly.

She liked the improvement well enough but the changes ended there. The place still looked much the same since the first time she’d crossed those gates. A few more shanties and some of the highrises had been hacked and modified to fit an ever-expanding population, but that was about it. More people...but more of the same types of people. They wandered the streets and back alleys, some of them were playing cards by the benches and selling food and ammo. Kleo was gone, replaced by a group of brothers called The Green’s from out east. Daisy was still in her same haunt, looking bored with a book in one hand. The scent of the air was just as putrid as she remembered and she was able-minded enough to admit she loved it.

A real, rare smile stretched her youthful lips. 

Nora felt bad for ducking through the crowd, avoiding Daisy for the State House. James, a ghoul about John’s age, recognized her from a couple months back, even though last time she saw him she’d been covered in shades and a trench coat.

Deegan had convinced her to trade in her old, saggy clothes for some new ones, but it attracted the kind of attention she'd enjoyed not having in her old age. She looked more like a young woman, duds included, than she had a couple weeks ago. Nestled in her pack was her old vault suit, why she packed it she wasn’t sure. But something about getting it back on, admiring herself in a mirror before strapping herself in some combat pieces to go out on a spree appealed to her immensely. Another part of her hoped John would throw down with her - traverse the unknown once again. It sounded incredibly enjoyable.

“Look’s at what we got here. Someone still lookin’ mighty sweet. You lookin' good for yer’ age, doll face,” James whistled, shouldering a busted looking Tommy Gun as he gave her a short once over. She flashed him a wide and fake grin, feeling a little lighter now as the skin around her cheeks bubbled with youth instead of wrinkled with age. Her nights with Edward Deegan had helped get her used to feeling young again. Perhaps she could make room for a little vanity when she thought about it...just one perk amidst the downfalls - one she’d try to relish. What good was youth unless you abused it once in awhile?

“James,” Nora greeted, dropping her grin for a pleasant smile. 

“Is John around?” she asked, still smiling even when he pretended to look offended as his, so-called, compliment washed off her. She had a lifetime of learning to ignore flattery and though looking young had changed a few quirks of her's it didn’t retrograde her mind.

“If he ain’t knee deep in some trim then he’s upstairs being mayor-like. We get him to sign the papers every once in awhile aroun’ here.”

Her nose wrinkled. The thought of John engaging in intimate activities troubled her but she forced a smile despite it, “I’ll knock then. Wouldn’t do to catch your upstanding mayor with his pants down.”

James laughed - a laugh so loud and haggardly that it still rang in her ears by the time she finished climbing the stairs. She caught sight of Hancock at his desk, eyes closed with his boots kicked up. The top three buttons of his dress shirt were unclasped, exposing a deep V of ghoulish skin. He looked stoned, so when Nora lifted her limp fist to the door, it was to rap at the wood as softly as she could. John’s eyes rolled open, depthless black focusing in on her with the lazy gate of a fat house cat, but eventually he saw her through his miasma. 

“God damn," he exhaled - the sound almost sensual, "...either I’m still trippin’ or I’m lookin’ at the object of my deepest darkest fantasies. That really you, Nora?”

She smiled, genuine and pink-faced, “I don’t think there's a rule that says both can't apply, but yeah it's me again.”

John’s boots stamped the floor, a strange look crossed his face before he was up on his feet; standing, grinning and stepping towards her, “What the hell are you doin’ here, Sister? Thought you had better things to do than entertain a busted shuffler like me.”

She breathed a laugh, “Shut up.” 

He got close enough to touch her but she crossed her arms without thinking. It was a move John noticed - ever aware of body language - yet his grin didn’t wane, though his eyes looked guarded. There was something queer about him being handsy with her now. She was in a body that just might respond to his charm this time around and a part of Nora thought maybe he wanted that more than he let on. She got a strange itchy feeling that this new predicament she found herself in was being taken by John much better than her.

\--”We figure out how to turn you ghoul, we could do this long term.”--

“Damn, kinda thought you were a hallucination last time I saw you. Lookin’ like the day I saved your ass from Ol’ Finn...might be you’re lookin’ a bit younger.”

“Don’t try and flatter me. James already kissed my ego enough a minute ago and I’d rather get high with you than get force-fed what you give the other ladies.”

John Hancock, Mayor of Goodneighbor, almost looked ashamed, but that - if that’s what it was - was instantly covered up by his trademark smirk, “If it’s chems and good company you want I’m your man.”

She knew he was. Nora had counted on it.

They fucked off for most of the day, trading old stories and catching each other up on the outlandish shit that had occurred over the past couple of months. If it wasn't the beers that loosened her tongue then it was the jet and ‘tats they shared between them. John kept pausing as if he wanted to ask her something out of line, but what that could have been she couldn't even begin to wonder. Nothing kept Hancock from saying and asking what he pleased. 

“How’s the town takin’ it?”

Nora pushed a bare foot up on the couch, rubbing her thumb down the ball of her knee cap, thinking back to Bebe and her siblings who pulled some pistols on her in her own home during her second week, reading lines from an old list of Synth guidelines before eventually taking the gun off her temple; satisfied but wary. It hadn't been a surprise. That old fear wasn't dead yet and it made more sense than taking a magic shot of youth juice at any rate.

“They haven’t hung me up in the streets yet, so I’d say it’s progress,” she told him, nearly smiling. 

She did that around John - smiled more and felt less awkward inside herself. These hormones of hers were taking away a lot of the bitterness she felt as an old woman, but after so long feeling a certain way it was jarring to feel differently - and she was stubborn. Even a bad feeling, felt for so long, had a way of seeming safe compared to something new. Without all the physical ailments and anxiety of death, she was noticing that every day yielded new thinking to her mind as well...

“Give ‘em a few more months and the days’ll feel normal again. You shook the foundation and now you gotta let the dust settle, but - hell, you can mark your name on that couch if ya want. It’s yours.”

“It kinda hurts my ass,” she complained in good spirits.

John gave her a sloppy grin, twirling a jet shooter in one hand and his burning cigarette in the other, “My bed’s a lot softer.”

Nora couldn’t help but feel flattered.

It wasn't until the day turned into the night that she followed him out onto the balcony, sharing a cigarette between the both of them and watching the town grow color as the stars began showing up. It was just what she missed. Just like old times - before she'd become jaded and bitter at the world. Glancing down she saw familiar faces; ghouls she called friends who stared at her more but not differently - not really. Some of their eyes lingered on her but most of them didn't.

“Yo, six o'clock. You made a new enemy since I last saw ya?” John asked, tapping his smoke against an ashtray, watching his own knuckles as he cracked them in a clear show of aggression; clenching his hand into a loose fist. She could see the deeper black of his eyes cut to the side. 

Nora arched a slim brow, turning her eyes to the spot John's elbow kicked over to. She frowned at what she saw but merely shrugged a shoulder when John gave her one of those sinister looks of his.

Edward Deegan was watching her from the outside wall of the Memory Den, holding a beer he no doubt bought from Charlie down in the Third Rail. Nora wanted to throw an empty whiskey bottle at him, but that would just show him he'd gotten under her skin and he hadn't. Not much at any rate...

Shouldn't have fucked him, she thought momentarily as she drew her and John’s smoke back between her lips. This was another thing that grounded her; smoking was something she had to kick way before she’d even met John. Said ghoul noticed the unusual change in her at the sight of Deegan and instead of ignoring it, decided to make it his prime goal for the evening to dig the gossip out of her. 

“Sounds like Nora’s got herself a tail,” he sounded like he was kidding, but Nora spotted something mean in his eyes; something jealous. For all his flirtations Nora should have realized there was something honest behind John's attentions, but the reaction she got was unexpected. He looked unhappy with her and that she didn't like. 

“What’s your problem?” she asked, flicking ash and crossing her arms. John looked from her to where Deegan stood far enough away from them that he’d have to be an action hero to hear them and yet John spoke as though they were surrounded by mutants.

“Didn’t think you were into that sort’ave thing.”

Nora bristled, “Sex? Or ghouls?”

“Pick one,” he bit; uncharacteristically hard.

She’d never seen John like this before. After all the decades she’d known him, during his worst and his best moments she’d never seen him mad at her like this and what she thought was for no reason too boot. Her skin prickled and a weird, crushing feeling settled in her gut - apprehension or maybe it was fear? But that was silly. She’d never been afraid of John, not even on the day she’d met him. Hell, if she hadn't been more concerned with the bigger picture she may have found the murder of Finn a little arousing.

Suddenly, she was offended. Even when she was young and new to this world her reaction to stress was to get mad and mean and John had tickled something close to fear in her and she wasn’t a fan of it.

“I fucked him, so what?” she told him, narrowing her eyes.

Hurt. She saw it there, clear as day before he swallowed and laughed it away. The whole thing left her spooked and feeling awkward the rest of the evening. Nora made a lame excuse at one point in the night, leaving his office high and intoxicated and oblivious to his argument that she stay the night; sleep it off. She didn’t want to hang around and feel like she’d crushed a part of John.

Even with all the flirting and offers and mischievous things he’d done with her over the years when she was young and old alike...she never thought any of it meant much. Out of nowhere, she found herself entertaining the idea of going to bed with him, of having something more than that maybe and that made her uncomfortable to no end.

“Hey, look if this is about earlier-”

“I just gotta get back. Don’t argue with me,” she told him on her way out the door. 

There were a million reasons she should have stayed in Goodneighbor. No one said she had to sleep in John's office, or his bed. She could have gotten a cheap room at the Rexford and waddled back to the Commons with her tail tucked between her legs in the morning. Nora also could have sat back down and talked to John like an adult instead of marching outside into the cold streets like a teenage fool.

Hormones, she muttered to herself as she kicked open the entrance doors, tasting a fire on the outskirts of town. 

Becoming young again made her feel invincible to an extent. She realized this a few weeks ago and thought it would be ironic if it got her killed. High and drunk she was, and ill with emotion maybe, but she pulled out her magnum, loaded it and let it rest at her hip with her finger over the trigger just in case.

For about a mile outside Goodneighbor she was convinced John was following her but when she stopped to turn around, ready to confront him, it was Edward Deegan walking out of the shadows. Go figure, she mused. Should have known he'd be creeping around, following her from place to place. She wondered if Jack missed him or if he was sent by the bi-spectacled man to observe her and had found it pleasing for other reasons. 

She didn't mind the sex so much. Physically it felt good and there was a certain amount of forced awareness she got that left her less unsure in her new skin than before. But being stalked as though she would tolerate it wasn't something she would stand for. 

His bloodshot eyes looked her up and down before he showed her his teeth in a grimace. In the refracted light from a lamp across the street he almost looked a bit like John, but then he opened his mouth. 

“What were you doing up there, Nora? You think he's got something better to offer you?”

Nora had to chew on those words for longer than she would have sober but eventually, she straightened her spine and gave the ghoul a heavy look. “If I was interested then I'm sure he would,” Nora told him, glaring and then with no quarter she said, “Stop following me, Edward. Or I'll break that ‘handsome’ face of yours and your slim prospects with dry up to nothing. I told you before - I stay away from this shit because of exactly what you're doing right now.”

"Yeah, you said that and now look where you are." Deegan took a stupidly courageous step forward. 

She spat at his feet like a nasty old woman - young she might look but she wasn't, not really. Maybe Deegan could play these games with a younger woman, but she felt too old for these things and she wasn't going to participate in some pissing contest. If he wanted to show up in the middle of the night and fuck her then that was one thing, but if he wanted to stalk her and get jealous when she did something he didn't like, well, that was something else.

Nora told herself all this, but she ended up pressed against a dark corner between Goodneighbor and the Boston Commons market, getting fucked like some belligerent animal with Deegan’s fingers flipping wetly between her thighs. Abusing her youth, she thought as she shivered and groaned; eyes tightly shut as the pleasant flashes gathered in her lower abdomen.

It felt good, but any high pleasure seemed like a distant thing until Edward whispered something filthy in her ear and she was suddenly and blindingly reminded of John - of a hot look of jealousy and those red shoulders risen for a fight. She came; rolling her hips back into his brutal, jarring and almost undesirable thrusts and for a few seconds she believed they were someone else's. 

On her lips she could taste sweat and rust from the wall Deegan had her up against. 

Before he finished, she gasped a name and it wasn't his, wasn't Nate's either. She grinned as he growled behind her, frustrated no doubt by her conscious slip of the tongue. Though he pulled at her hair, bending her back as he fucked her extra hard, she couldn't stop from grinning. Traditional male domination - the nasty enjoyment it gave her almost made her cum again but that was hoping for too much.

It was over quickly and when he finally came she was surprised she’d had an orgasm at all, let alone close to a second.

“How did that feel?” Nora asked him afterward, breathing carefully as she pulled her pants up, buckling them low on her hips. She watched him as he shouldered the wall, catching his breath as his cock hung limply between his legs, looking relatively foolish somehow. He also looked about as miserable as she felt, but Nora told herself the ghoul deserved it for his behavior towards her. It was petty of her to want to toy with the ghoul's emotions like this, but she hated being something coveted, especially in such an immature way. For being so old, one would have thought Deegan would be beyond this sort of thing by now...

She never got an answer from him, only a sour look. That, however, suited her just fine and when she walked off with only the slightest limp, it didn't hurt her to know he wasn't following her anymore.

Though her walk back home was longer, slower and the cum between her thighs made every step bothersome, she got there eventually. By the time she’d undressed, washed and fallen into bed she wasn’t thinking about John or Deegan or serums and their effects on her body as well as her mind. Nora wasn’t thinking at all but when she slept she dreamt of nothing but missed opportunities and a ghoul in a tricorn and red frock, frowning at her from across the bar...

\------

Off and on she thought about John while she went about her day to day, but it was only when she fell asleep that she truly couldn’t avoid him. He was all her inert mind agonized about. 

These dreams were at times vivid and sometimes hazy; lingering only in sensations left in the morning. Other times it felt like she was awake, living out moments of the past where she'd made a different choice and end up with different outcomes.

One dream, in particular, left her coated in sweat; feeling feverish and desperate in a way she hadn’t ever felt before. The feeling these dreams left her with were familiar to a degree, but on another level she hadn't ever experienced. Perhaps it was lust, a base need or some form of desire she wasn't used to and if it was then those fucking hormones were to blame for sure. 

John just happened to be in the middle of natural bodily functions...that's all, she told herself.

Nora didn’t give herself long to wallow in the confusion or the uncertainty. She got up, balled up her damp sheets, washed off the sweat in her sink and put on her old vault suit; ignoring any heated sensations between her legs as she pulled the tight material over her hips. For a moment she felt a strong urge to fall back on her bedside and see if she could make herself feel better than Deegan did or Nate ever had...or John ever could.

"Don't be stupid," she whispered, zipping up her vault suit to the bottom of her chin with a grim frown.

She got more looks with the blue thing on, but it helped ease her mind into her still so new and strange body. The suit was like stepping into a time warp...but it was difficult to forget about things when her mind was half fried on dopamine.

With that same frown, she stared at herself in her cracked mirror until she convinced herself the past forty years hadn't happened. The familiarity of the blue was exactly what she craved. 

Nora had even taken to collecting bits of prewar junk that stimulated past memories, those before and after the bombs. A little toy stress ball that reminded her of college. An off purple blanket which was the same shade of carpet in her first apartment. She'd even found an old record player in one of the empty skyrises - it didn't work of course - but it gave her a humble feeling of nostalgia nonetheless. 

It was the little things, she told herself. And by the time December rolled around she'd filled her home with trinkets and a new wardrobe full of a young woman's clothes. Sometimes she even forgot she'd been old and gray and close to dying - some days she felt like no time had passed. It had become comfortable and almost, dare she say, enjoyable. 

Then...John showed up. 

She was sat on her bed, a cold beer cooling a bruise on her cheek and her pink stress ball in another - fist curling - when someone knocked on her door. Nothing to be worried about, she'd thought simply, getting up with her beer in hand, her stress ball left on the bed. The thought that it could have been Little Dean coming to apologize on behalf of his drunken father crossed her mind, but it was too late for the kid to be up wandering the roads. There was no preparing for the sight beyond her front door when she'd opened it nor the way the light flickered in his eyes when he noted the purple blotch on her face.

"John."

“You got time for an ol’ friend?” He asked her, standing in the darkness with nothing but her porch light to touch him - a light that did nothing to show his face, for the tricorn cast him in shadow. 

Nora swallowed, recanting all the dreams she'd been having about him, felt her stomach lurch and let him inside without a word. An unbidden image of being forced over his open mouth almost made her trip on a backstep - that dream hadn't pulled its teeth out of her yet.

He tipped the old leather brim of his hat and walked inside - the sharp sound of his boots on her wooden floor jarred her pulse like expended shells only did. John paused in the middle of her room, surveyed her trinkets and furniture. The look he gave her underwear on the floor made her cheeks darken and the bruise begin throbbing again. She'd never needed much privacy - much space and hated her home in Springdale for its size compared to what she was used to. Her two-room home here suited her perfectly, but with John Hancock standing in it, it seemed suddenly so small. 

“You want a beer,” she asked him, stuttering. It embarrassed her to hear herself, but thankfully John didn't seem to notice it. 

“Naw, I doubt I'm stayin’ long.”

Nora felt her brows rise and crease, “What? So you just waltz over here in the middle of the night for a few minutes?”

“Who said you were my only pitstop?” Was his witty reply, but it lacked the humor she was used to.

There was something deeply wrong in his posture and tone. The usual easy vibe he wore like a prized medallion had been replaced with something unyielding and callus and Nora watched him turn around, stare at her blankly, and realized she'd done that to him. Somehow she'd fucked up. Whatever deep-seeded insecurities she'd dredged up by confessing to fucking Edward Deegan had ruined their easy relationship.

It was like she always said...fucking was never simple and it was seldom worth the few moments of bliss it offered but rarely gave.

She knew what she did…going around in circles was something a younger woman would do and Nora had to remind herself she'd been old before. She wasn't stupid but playing this game was.

“Well…” she almost asked what else he was doing in Boston Commons, but thought better of it, “...what's on your mind, John?”

“Look, take a seat ‘cause I got some shit that needs sayin’ and I'm not gonna sugar coat it either. We gotta get something straight.”

“A-alright,” she whispered and that time he heard the stutter, saw it and looked embarrassed for her almost. Nora cursed herself, walked across the room and sat down in her lazy chair, refraining herself from clawing the armrest in her nerves. They had only just now started this interaction and she was already begging for it to be over with.

John stood in the middle of her room, boots spread shoulder length apart, arms laid out along his hips and head tilted down; eying her seriously. He looked ready for his own confession and that made her insides roll unpleasantly. What had she gotten herself into? - and why...why did it feel so hard to breathe?

“I love you,” he told her as if he were digesting the words like poison, "but you already knew that didn't ya?"

Somehow, she wasn't surprised by that but she hadn't known...wouldn't have guessed. If Piper had told her John Hancock loved her then she would have laughed and corrected her. John loved chems, easy women, and Goodneighbor, but not her. Turns out she was wrong.

Nora blinked in disbelief and watched John's eyes dart around her face, lingering on her busted cheek.

“Fuck, Nora," he grated. 

"You takin’ it upon yourself to turn into this,” he gestured to himself - to the ruin of his face and Nora felt her cheeks go hot again, “got me hoping you'd be up to somethin’ between us. Then you go and show up like you are now - lookin’ just like the day I gutted Finn. That hope 'ah mine got dashed pretty fast but then," John grinned bitterly, "to top it all off, you admit your fuckin’ that errand boy of the Cabots.”

Nora gawked at John, unable to form a reply. The lack of any response from her seemed to test whatever resolve John had walked in here with. His hands started trembling at his thighs and she watched through a pounding heart as he fumbled in his pockets for a pack of smokes, failed twice at lighting a cigarette before finally getting one lit.

“Nothin’ to say to that, huh?” He asked her, looking incredibly agitated for someone whom she'd never seen all that frantic until recently. 

“Yeah,” he mumbled around his smoke, fingers shaking on his lapels, “karma ain't as dumb as I am. Don't worry. I get it, Sister. I get it.”

Nora still hadn't come up with anything to say; her lips parted and closed over and over again and the whole time John stood there watching her, waiting and hoping. 

Her throat was paralyzed. The old woman in her was screaming. 

Buck the fuck up and say something, she willed herself and yet she just sat there and gazed up at him only guessing at what showed on her face and what John saw. It must have been what he'd feared because he gave a hard nod, biting at his smoke before turning tail and leaving out the way he came. 

When the door clicked shut she exhaled so hard she ended up coughing until her throat ran dry and sore. It felt like an hour or more that she sat there, staring at the scuff marks his heels had left in the wood - evidence of how hard he’d turned and how fast he wanted out. 

By the time she managed to stand up and shuffle outside her home to look for him, he'd left town. No one that was still out in the streets had seen him, but she'd already known he wasn't the kind of man to stick around after being kicked like that. And she had kicked him. John bared his heart to her and she did worse than reject it. She hadn't said a word to him. Nothing. 

Back in her room, on her bed, she took the pink stress ball into her hands, rolling the bumpy texture around in her fingers and wondered what it was that John saw in her. 

It didn't make sense to her that such a confident ghoul like him would wait for her to be old and ghoulified before saying anything. The flirting didn't count because he'd have dished that out to anyone...or would he? 

Nora searched her memories for times when John’s flirtations branched out from her. They did, but rarely, and none it was very comparable to how he treated her. What never branched out was the unique way he spoke to her. She'd always thought it was because of something else. Finding out it was because the man loved her was…

Nora didn't know what to think. Didn't know how to feel, either. 

One thing was certain, though, she'd given John hope and crushed it and then got shitty with him when he acted weird; told him she was fucking a ghoul after he'd lived a lifetime thinking that sort of thing bothered her. What she did was unforgivable.

She was at the very least a bad friend for not saying anything…and at worst...

Nora didn't know. But by the time she'd worked out some of her own personal questions she'd broken her pink stress ball - it's plastic sack resting on the floor with whatever toxic goop that had previously been inside coating her fingers and the wooden boards between her feet. 

The only thing she could focus on was the color of the busted toy below her, watching as her sight slowly clouded over in tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's been reading this. It's a bit outside my norm so the comments and kudos are very much appreciated. More on the way.


	4. December

Seeing Nicky again as a younger woman was less monumental and more matter of fact than she had thought, but the old synth was always practical and upon seeing her he had only a few minutes to come up with a witty welcome before some middle-aged woman was busting through the doors, begging for Valentine to hear her case. Nora smiled and pointed back to the door when Nick Valentine, detective and old friend, gave her a solemn look. The mechanical ma had work to do and it wasn't her place to intrude.

She’d wait outside for him and so she did, hoping that the fresh air would calm her racing heart.

Diamond City had changed the most since she was in her twenties. The streets were just as crowded as ever but the upper stands had grown outwards, swallowing up the emptiness she’d balked at in her youth. The city must have tripled in the past forty years and the divide between the well-off and the poor had dwindled significantly. For some reason, it was here, on a rickety bench, that she felt the most displaced - truly a woman out of time. She'd never liked Diamond City all that much either - it had always given off that pretentious vibe that made no sense in a world like this. It still had a lingering smell of bigotry to it, but not so much as before. 

The cities progress was something she had little to do with. The past two Mayors had been good for the city and from the posters nailed to the walls and lamp posts it looked like they would be holding elections soon.

Despite the stain of its past, there were good people that lived here. Nick called it home and that was good enough for her. 

“Didn't think you'd be showing up in my neck of the woods so soon.”

Nora looked up to find the synth lighting up a smoke beside her; one shoulder on the corner wall. He had never traded in the trenchcoat and aside from a few seamless patches, it was timeless. Those bright yellow eyes stared at her with detachment but his plastic smile was genuine. Her eyes narrowed up at him in question. 

“The papers have been talking about you and in this city, gossip flows like booze. You've made quite the splash, kid,” he told her. His voice was always so warm and rich. Like her, he was a relic out of time. No matter how old she'd gotten he never stopped with the nickname.

“It's been several months so I shouldn't be surprised,” she replied, pulling some hair out of her face as the breeze picked up. Valentine watched her secure the hair behind her ear before saying anything else and when he did she could feel the tension in it. 

“So, what's the score this time?”

Nora looked back out across the market wondering that very thing herself. Since that evening with John, she hadn't gotten much sleep. She hadn’t seen Deegan since then either and as bleary as that whole mess had been she felt lonely. Maybe visiting Nicky was a way to fill that emptiness, but she didn't feel much more whole. It wasn't that she regretted coming here, just that it wasn't going to solve her problem and any advice Nick could give her she already knew.

“I think I might be developing feelings for John Hancock.”

Nora had a long time to think about it and it made sense, but how and when had it happened? At which point did she feel that way and was it feelings that went beyond friendship? Yes, it was, but to what extent. Did she love him? Certainly, she wanted to fuck him - the feelings of lust Deegan kindled in her had molded into a real fire when it came to John...but was that what he wanted from her?

The way he'd looked at her that night said not. He loved her. John said he loved her and knowing that meant she had to figure how the depth of her own feelings before giving him any more false hope.

“You could have written a letter if that's all this is about,” he told her, a smirk in his voice. She looked up to find him watching her with a know-it-all expression unbecoming the Commonwealth's best detective. 

Of course, if anyone who knew her could see then it'd be him. As astute as a real Sherlock Holmes he was.

“You know me, Nicky, I can't write a proper letter to save my life, besides everything runs without me now. What else was I gonna do but sit around with my head up my own ass, hoping someone needed me for...something.”

“If you're bored I could use a new private eye,” more smirks in his tone. Nora imagined tailing adulterers and looking for lost kittens and snorted in amusement.

“I'm…” she thought of a word to describe herself and settled on an explanation instead, “not myself anymore. I'm back to second guessing and feeling unsure and the only difference between now and then is that I've got all these memories and-”

“And a whole lotta good staring back at you,” he cut her off.

She gave him a defeated look but he just offered her a cigarette and cleared his throat as he sparked one between her lips with his flip lighter. “You did what no one else had the stones to do. You threw out the trash and brought the people together. Give it another lifetime and I'll be out of the job. Mark my words, soon it'll just be scorned lovers and botched dealings that cross my desk.”

“It doesn't feel like me.” She supplied simply, unable to find a way to explain the feeling.

They both sat outside for awhile, sharing a smoke before Nick Valentine cleared his throat, "You know. That hooligan's always held a torch for you. Never saw the same look in his eyes when he was looking at you."

Nora felt more of that crushing guilt she'd been locked inside of since that night - a wave of it made her feel sick. She inhaled the nicotine as if it would help, but it didn't...nothing would until she sucked it up and talked to John in person. She owed him that much.

Before she could voice her fears, Ms. Perkins stuck her wrinkled face out the door, smiling brightly despite the way her lips quivered, “Nick, I don't mean to be a bother-”

“I know. I know,” Nick muttered, stubbing out his cigarette. Before he could turn back to Nora she was already waving him on. He had work to do, things only he could manage and she was, like he said, just bored...just lonely.

“I'll write you,” she told him instead of saying goodbye. 

The walk back to the Commons was filled with self-doubt and not much else. Roads were clear and happy. No raiders like the old days. No hidden packs of rabid dogs ready to score their next meal. Nothing to kill. 

When she was old that fact made her smile, but right now she had the energy of a young woman and the confused emotions of someone that needed to figure things out. Typically she'd get high or take a trip somewhere past her normal haunts. She thought about figuring out where Deegan ran off to so he could exorcise some of this lust, maybe it could clear her mind and let you decide if it was a sexual desire or romantic notions that surrounded John, but the idea of sex was about as appealing as paperwork. 

No chems. No sex. Killing sounded good; doable. She'd pack a bag, get a long range assault rifle and see how far she could get until the good people thinned out and the populations turned into ferals and deathclaws. She told herself that's what she'd do when she got home, instead she put on a change of clothes and headed for the gaudy neon signs.

\---------

It hurt - that's all she could think of was how much something that didn't open up a wound in her chest could hurt so much.

Catching Hancock getting fucked on his sofa by some bony woman with a shaved head and track marks up her arms made Nora let out a terrible sound in his doorway. She'd heard the noises outside his office - a part of her knew what to expect - yet she went in anyway. She shoved his closed door open, ignoring any semblance of privacy and saw what she had feared. What else did she expect?

At the whimper she made, John's eyes locked with hers over the woman's shoulder; those half-lidded eyes suddenly wide open and clear. She stumbled on her heels, put a hand to steady herself on the door frame and took in the spectacle. The woman looked pretty but rough, moving fluidly with her eyes closed and her lower lip sucked between her teeth...as if she were enjoying herself. Could have been an act, but the way she jerked backward into John’s hips left little guess.

That woman wanted John and somehow that made the hurt sharpen further. There was no reason for her to be jealous - it was her fault...

As soon as John took a hold of the woman’s hips, forcing her still Nora felt her color drain. He was saying something loudly and the girl’s eyes were open, blinking and staring at her. She was stoned. 

Nora took and step back, swallowed and heard herself whimper again. This was a terrible idea, she realized. Too late to turn back the clock, so she ran. She turned around and simply left without a word. What could she have said? What had she done by doing that and how in the fuck would she gather her pride and face John again after tonight?

Nora got the hell out of dodge, feeling like she took a bullet to the chest. Serves her right, a part of her whispered to herself. Maybe next time she'd think next time she went and broke someone's heart. 

Something upstairs, above her head, shattered, jolting her on the stairwell, but she didn't stop. Even when she heard hard steps following her down the stairs she only picked up her legs higher and made a mad dash out the door. Heat filled her face, spreading down and out through her whole body until she was outside the State House panting as if it was the middle of summer. And she kept going - running away until she was somewhere outside the city where the grass tickled her ankles and the sound of the wind through the trees was all she could hear besides the pounding of blood in her ears. 

A tight sensation of nausea along with some bastardized version of arousal filled her up. She wanted to vomit. The exertion from running - the blinding image of John getting ridden in the low candlelight of his office...it made her want to puke, but instead, she hugged herself and paced in the open, where anything could get her.

“What were you thinking?!” She shouted - another stupid idea. 

“You're not stupid...so stop acting like it,” she chastised herself, quieter this time. Then Nora said it again and again but by the fourth time, she felt the floodgates approaching and simply sat down in the dirt and dead grass while she cried. The few tears she’d shed after John left her home in the Commons didn't count for much. This, right here and now, had been her first real cry since she'd watched her son die. Even then the tears she shed had been half angry.

Since she wasn't in a romance novel and never had been and never wanted to be, John didn't come chasing after her and if he had he probably didn't look much further than outside his State House. Hopefully, if he had any sense he’d apologize to the cunt he was fucking and enjoy the rest of his night. No, Nora didn’t want that. A nasty part of her wanted him to feel as awful as she did right now...but who knew if she felt as bad now as he did when she’d spurned him. Probably, not.

What good would that have done either of them anyhow? She’d probably have made a fool of herself even if he’d been alone in his room.

She was certain he wasn’t out looking for her. Still, Nora took the long way home, avoiding the usual roads that intersected with Goodneighbor. By the time her head hit the pillow a peak of dawn was showing. It was shocking she made it home at all given how weak she felt when she finally shut her eyes, but just because she was exhausted didn't mean she was devoid of dreams. 

Images of blood and knives slicing and coating her thighs while John tried to pull them apart clung to her when she woke up a few hours later. Morning light drifted peacefully through her window and yet she felt like she couldn't get out of bed for the life of her. Never had she been too weak to get out of her own bed, not even when she was an old woman with bad hip problems. 

No one visited her the whole day and then the second day went by and no one knocked on her door. It wasn't until the third day that she heard someone tapping at her window. 

Nora knew who it was without even pulling her face out of her pillow. Deegan let himself in without knocking. She could hear his familiar footsteps after he shut and locked her door and when her bed sank she stiffened in anticipation. 

A hot, large palm rested on the back of her bare thigh. She'd more of less stayed in bed for three days and her underwear and one sock-covered foot showed that well enough. If ever she'd looked rotten in her life then this was it. 

“You need some sun,” he told her; voice much less brutal than she remembered. He must have been stalking her again to know she hadn't left her home since she got back from Goodneighbor.

“I told you to stop following me,” the words came muffled out from her pillow - losing much of the venom or threat they would have otherwise had.

“You know the phrase ‘people in hell want ice water.’ Doesn't mean I'm wrong.”

Nora turned her head to the side, inhaling a lungful of cool air as she looked up to find Deegan watching her carefully. His red-rimmed eyes were guarded so she said what she needed to say, hoping he was a steeled as he looked. “I think I’m in love with John,” she admitted, frowning at the way the words tasted. 

He didn't look surprised, but he did look disappointed. Maybe in his own way, he loved her too...she wouldn't know because she hadn't cared to know. He'd never been more than a work associate at best and a pain in her ass at worst. The only thing that put her anywhere close to friendship before the fucking started was a couple moments they shared reminiscing about the past. Aside from daydreaming about flapjacks and hot coffee, they had nothing in common. Nora didn't love Edward Deegan like she loved John Hancock and that was that. No sense worrying about it now. She could never hurt Deegan like she hurt John anyhow.

“So, he turned you down or something?” Deegan asked, still with his palm on her thigh. The rough edge of his thumb swiped back and forth slowly; tickling. Nora didn't bother shaking it off. It was comforting, somehow. 

“Not exactly,” she muttered, sighing tiredly and letting her head fall back on her pillow, “he was getting fucked by some chem-headed bitch…when I walked in on him.”

Behind her she could feel Deegan laughing, “You got what you deserved.”

Nora yanked her leg away from his palm, twisted up on her bed and glared at him, punching him in the chest until he choked and stopped with the chuckling. His angular jaw was still framing a smirk when she growled at him, “I'm not in the mood for this shit, Ed. So why don't you get the fuck out of my house?!”

“I'll leave, sure, but you know I'm right.” Those were his parting words and after Deegan left, letting her door click quietly behind him, she couldn't really disagree with him. The absence of his hand, despite leaving her skin itchy, made her feel more alone and cold than she could ever remember feeling. She did get what she deserved she supposed. Karma was a bitch, after all, and being young again was just as hellish as she'd feared.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to those that read, left comments and kudos. It's much appreciated. If you have the time please let me know what you think! <3


	5. January

Emogene sat at her vanity with an air of impatient and allure that Nora had seen in herself once or twice, but she hated it now. The woman looked about due for another dose in a few years, but she didn’t carry herself like an old woman. Nora thought back to when she’d gone on the hunt for her back in the day and she’d been about the age she looked now as she was then and the same thing rang true. Emogene didn’t act her age yet she’d obviously grown into something old at one point - had felt the inhibiting discomfort of age and then suddenly had the vigor of youth back. There was always a first for everything.

“Well? Spit it out already. I don’t have all day you know,” Emogene mused, curling a crooked finger in her hair. But that was a lie because Emogene had all the time in the world, same as Nora did now - same as the rest of her family and Deegan...and John. Time meant something completely different now.

Nora sat with her stained notebook on her thigh and a chewed-up pencil in her hand. On the front page was a list of questions, some seeming stupid now but others she needed answers to and Emogene seemed like the only one who could clarify what needed clarifying.

“I have fourteen questions I need to ask, you got time for that?”

“I suppose so,” Emogene replied, leaning back against her vanity with a careful flip of her hair - it pooled over one shoulder in an auburn wave.

With a fresh needle of lead on her pencil, Nora sat up straight and asked, “Did you feel emotionally unstable the first time you took the serum? - and if so when did it go away?”

“My God,” Emogene muttered, “is this some sort of psychological examination? Are you channeling Freud or something? Because this is most silly of you.”

Nora bristled, feeling her finger joints burn against the grip she had on the notebook. “It’s not silly,” she insisted, “and I would have thought someone who'd gone through this would be more sympathetic.”

“Well,” Emogene rolled her eyes skywards, “perhaps it's because you’re not really a Cabot, just an extension of the bloodline. Purity could have everything to do with it.”

This was pointless, Nora thought, but she simply marked an ‘X’ by her first question and moved on to the next.

“How many years does the serum take off when you take it?”

The disgruntled woman across from her actually perked up at the question, as if the question was somehow flattering. Nora never liked Emogene much but it was never something, in particular, she had found unpleasant about her. Right now she decided she just didn't like the woman's personality…

“Well, sometimes it depends on at what age I am when I use it, but on the average is reduces me by forty to forty-five years. Give or take. You were quite the old hag when Deegan gave it to you so you're what? Thirty?”

“I…” she paused then, realizing she didn't know, “I guess I'm not sure...but I look younger than before the Vault, so I must be in my early twenties right now.”

Emogene scoffed, “You looked older than that if you asked me, but it effects us all differently. Maybe you being crazy now is just a side effect.”

After that Nora asked three more questions before giving up. It was like talking to a child. If there was one thing to take away from that afternoon it was to be thankful she wasn't as flippant and petty as Emogene. The woman was older than her, in that she had lived longer and still acted like a spoiled brat. If Nora had to feel like a hormonal young woman for the next five or six years then so be it. It was a small price to pay for keeping her wits intact.

Before she left, Deegan whistled her over to the bar. She didn't hold anything against the ghoul so she sat with him at the counter as he fixed them both two stiff drinks.

“Did you get anything out of her?” He asked, dropping a perfectly circular ball of ice in her bourbon.

Nora shrugged, “I don't know what I expected honestly. At least I feel thankful I'm not as much of a cunt as she is.”

“You're not a cunt, Nora. But the one you got ain't bad.”

She gave him a heated glare, but he lifted the corner of his mouth in an amused sneer and she couldn't help but smile, shaking her head and running her fingers over her scalp, eventually sighing heavily. “What am I going to do, Edward? It feels like I've screwed up so much in so little time and so damn easily!”

He didn't have an answer for her for that. Not that she expected one. Deegan did, however, pour her a second glass.

By the time she left the Cabot manor it was near dark and she felt like the day might have been wasted. Something about walking down the cultivated paths through Boston felt foolish, especially as she gripped her notebook to her chest instead of a gun. Her magnum was locked in at her hip, but the fact that she held her pointless and useless notes to her like a shield was a bit trite even for her.

A few times she almost took the wrong turn, reasoning she'd be better off spending her night walking out of safety and into open territory just for the fuck of it.

No, Nora reminded herself, you have a place that needs you. Even if the place ran mostly by itself, she knew everyone felt better for her being there than away.

Nora paused to talk to a group of men just outside Boston Commons who were setting up a caravan to run through the night down to Murkwater Construction. They asked her how the hunt went, hopefully not knowing much about her little ‘errand’ but she smiled and laughed and pretended to be happy and had to admit afterward, that pretending made her feel slightly better.

Amelia caught her outside her door; bony little hips poking out against her dress.

“General!” She half-shouted, stepping in front of her on the pathway up to her home. Nora arched a brow, letting the notebook finally rest against her hip. The girl had shoved her way into Nora's life better than most, perhaps having been one of the first people she spoke with after the change meant something to Amelia. It wouldn't do good to dash the girl's spirits either so Nora gave her a tired smile instead of snapping.

“What's the problem?” Nora asked in a neutral tone.

“I-he!” Amelia's face brightened and then her puffy lips went thin and pale, “It’s that ghoul Mayor. I saw him crawl in through your window earlier and he's been inside ever since. H-he...he’s armed. I saw it.”

Nora felt the color drain into her face.

Amelia continued, voice raising, “I was going to go in there. I was! I promise, but I’ve never-shotguns scare me. Guns scare me. I’m so sorry!”

“Calm down,” Nora shushed, pulling at the girl’s shoulder, thumbing the knot of her collarbone in, hopefully, a calming manner. Amelia looked up at her with wet eyes. She wasn’t much younger looking than Nora right now, but the girl had only lived for about eighteen maybe nineteen years and Nora had seen her born and raised in the Commons. As it should be, she wasn’t used to guns...or ghoulish Mayors sneaking into homes apparently.

Having to calm down Amelia, shouldering her until her breathing slowed, in a way, grounded Nora’s own racing thoughts. She felt less like on the verge of passing out when she finally convinced Amelia not to worry - that she knew Hancock and that he’d visited before and all was well. Nora watched her walk away, looking back every other step it seemed until Nora gave her a wave and a wide convincing smile. Nora didn’t look at her own door until the girl was completely gone.

How the fuck was she going to do this? Her notebook, which might as well have been empty, felt like the only anchor she had. The sharp sound of wrinkled paper filtered in through the noise of the courtyard as she fisted her shield. There was one question in there that Emogene had answered with gusto…

_”Did you start doing things you regretted not doing before?”_

Emogene had laughed at her for a long minute before asking her why’d she think she ran off all the time. Nora learned the woman had been raised to be a prim and proper lady that’d marry and have babies and when she’d found herself young again she did everything she wasn’t ‘supposed’ to do and continued to even now. Nora had to admire that, in a way. Even though the afternoon was wasted, or at least she thought it was, there was something in those words of Emogene’s that she could relate to.

She had strong, almost monumental, urges to do things differently this time around. Logically it could be explained, she figured. Nora had been too busy making her mark in the world to have time for personal things. Many would view this existence as a blessing, so why was it so hard to acclimate to it?

These were things to worry about later.

Right now she had John Hancock waiting in her home; uninvited but welcome. What was she going to do? - or say?

Apologise.

She should tell him how she feels about him even if she'd probably most certainly ruined any opportunity. Being honest and selfless had been a trait she always took pride in but it seemed to be taking a back seat lately. Nora needed to take a deep breath and face the music…so, with a deep breath, she turned the knob on her front door and pushed her way inside.

John was sitting in her lazy chair, knees spread with her crystal ashtray sat on his thigh; a cigarette partway to his thin mouth. Those black eyes looked straight through her and despite the scarring on his face, she could tell that the red rimming around his eyes sockets was from lack of sleep. Not unlike her own.

“Well,” John rasped, “look who it is. Finally made it back from lover boy's pad, huh?.”

Nora frowned and cut her eyes to the side, unable to look at him without ushering in defenses. A Cappy statue stared back at her along a shelf beside her bed.

“How long have you been here?” She asked him, stepping further into her room - eyes on the floor - resting her notebook on the bed with an air of aloofness she hated in herself. As if to make up for it, she gave John a soft look, but he remained stone-faced as he took a drag off his smoke.

He ignored her question, exhaling gushes of smoke out his nose, “Did’ya like what ya saw last time you visited? That why you been avoidin’ me and my town again? Cause that's pretty damn hypocritical of you, Nora.”

She agreed it was, "I know it is..."

There was something about the darkness of her room that was making her feel claustrophobic. Nora looked around her room and settled on lighting a larger lantern on her bedside table. When the room was awash in orange she sat down on her bed oh so carefully before finally looking into his eyes, “I’m sorry for that, by the way. It was wrong of me on so many levels.”

“What're you so sorry for? Not like I don’t get pussy every other blue moon, or when the stars align jus’ right,” he laughed at that, but it held no charm and the sound left her stomach feeling sour. It sounded like a monsters laugh - like the laugh of someone about ready to claw and disembowel.

“John,” she started, closing her eyes as if that would make her feel less awkward, “I’ve made a lot of bad decisions since last September...all the ones involving you especially. My mind - it doesn’t feel like my own most times and even when it does all I have to do is look in the mirror and I just...I don’t know what I’m doing suddenly. Nothing feels real and yet it's so fucking real it...”

She had no words really. It all felt like something stupid when she talked about it, which it probably was. All those fortifications she'd erected over her years were not only crumbled but pinning her to the ground and as she spoke she could feel the weight of it crushing her lungs. During her confession, which felt less monumental when spoken out loud than in her mind, John remained silent. He stubbed out his cigarette into the ashtray at his thigh, where a dozen or more butts rested. Nora could look at it and measure his wait time by cigarette and figured he’d only been around for an hour or two until she arrived, but in this situation, an hour could feel like a lifetime.

For a long while, Nora sat at the edge of her bed, her hands clasped together in her lap, watching him as he lit up another smoke, took a long drag and swallowed her in from muddy boots, past the sweat stains on her shirt, the dirt on her face, all the way up to the mess of her hair. That seldom felt vanity struck her hard right then.

Suddenly, she felt the strong urge to brush her fingers through her hair - to run a hand down the wrinkles in her shirt or check to make sure the grime on her face wasn’t too visible. Looking pretty didn't matter right now, so why her fingers twitched in her lap she could say.

John blew a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling before finally breaking the silence. “Before you saw me with Sam, what’d you wanna see me for?”

Sam, Nora repeated to herself. She instantly hated that name and that woman and knew John saw that on her face. Another selfish tally to add to the list. Never in her life before could she remember feeling such venom like she did now and for things that weren't abhorrent like the Institute or the Brotherhood had been.

Instead of looking like he relished what he saw on her face he merely winced, “Come on, Nora. I spilled my guts and now it feels like you’re jumpin’ rope with ‘em. Be honest with me will ya?”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated - it was a lame response, but it was all she could think of. When she couldn’t seem to formulate a proper reply John took pity on her and offered her his open pack of smokes. She smiled limply but took one and lit it on her lantern's flame, tasting oil through the layer of nicotine.

The cigarette didn’t seem to help her thought process, though, for she asked him, “Is Sam your girl or something?”

John’s scarred brow rose, “Heh’ man, even if she was you think I’d be here if that mattered?”

“That’s a shitty way to treat someone,” she muttered without thinking about the hypocrisy of that statement.

“Say’s the woman that let Edward Deegan fuck her after a certain ghoul admitted somethin’ pretty personal. You still got his cum between your legs from today?”

“How would you-” Nora glared, swallowing her anger, “First of all that’s nobody else's business but mine, secondly I haven’t had sex with him since November...and...are you two taking notes cause it sounds like you’ve been stalking me too.”

“Guess it was misinformation then, cause there’s no way you’d do somethin’ like that,” the bitter sarcasm in his tone brought her back from the edge. She swallowed audibly, took a drag off the smoke and counted down from ten.

"I'm losing my damn mind, John. I would have never spoken to you like this before...I'm sorry." Another apology, she grimaced, resting her forehead in her palm; an elbow on her thigh. What was it about her that kept him coming back? Is it that he could remember the woman she used to be more clearly than the offensive one she'd turned into?

After a minute or two, John cleared his throat; tone softening, “So, you gonna tell me what you wanted that night or do I gotta wait another month to get a reply outta you?”

“Yes. I mean no, I-” she took a second to gather herself; fingers wrung tight in the hem of the button-up shirt. If she didn't vomit the truth now she never would.

“I’ve been having dreams about you and me - about us and what I might have been missing. You looked at me like you loved me that night on the balcony which, I admit now...scared me. And - shit, you know me well enough, John, even before all this I got angry when I was scared. All my reactions these days have been tenfold and wrong...and the response I gave you last time we met was the worst of it.”

“So what? Did ya want to tell me all that then? Just that?”

Nora remembers seeing John laid back on his sofa, looking lost to the world with that woman, Sam, riding him into oblivion. Her stomached rolled unpleasantly.

“Yes,” she told him, unable to look him in the eyes, "maybe I also wanted to see if I wasn't too late."

John laughed regrettably, “Man, Sam picked the wrong night to score some chems then. Sister always did have shit timing."

John ran an open palm down his face in something akin to defeat, stubbing out another cigarette. She’d forgotten about hers. An inch of ash clung to the dim red ring of slow burning tobacco. With a flick, the ash drifted to the floor between her boots. Another lung full seemed to calm her down, or at least take her mind off the stale air between them. It felt like they were at an impasse and she wasn’t sure where to go from here.

“You still like me?” he asked; sounding very unlike himself.

Nora looked up, eyes wide at the raw expression on his face. She didn’t deserve a man like John - she hated herself for all the mistakes she’d made so far, but the way John looked at her made part of the sour feeling fade away.

"Of course I do," she told him.

"You think ya might love me, then?"

A brittle smile wedged itself into the corners of her mouth, "It feels that way."

She found herself standing up on her feet - bed creaking at the lack of weight - before taking a hesitant step towards him. By the time she was standing in front of him he was leaning his head back on the headrest, staring up at her with a resolved line to his features. She put a careful hand on his shoulder, bending at the waist; eyes running around his face for any signs she was pushing her luck. There was nothing on his face but open hope, so she pushed a knee in between his legs, braced herself against the back of the chair and leaned in…

She'd meant to rest in his lap, hold him; breathe him in and absorbed some of that power and warmth he always had, but John had different ideas.

He surged up, grasping the back of her neck and clearing the short distance. John's lips were dry and heated, but the contact gave her a sharp throb that startled her mouth open. It didn’t take but a second for the kiss to turn wet and passionate, his tongue sliding against her own with an intensity that felt infectious. Desperate fingers took a fistful of hair at the nape of her neck, twisting her at an angle, lips slipping along his own. Nora couldn't’ recall being kissed like this before...once after she’d been with Deegan he’d tried to kiss her but she’d turned her head and he hadn’t seemed to mind much. When she’d kissed Nate it had been soft and delicate and never, ever like this.

John kissed her in a way that shouldn’t have surprised her but did. And it felt like she was melting despite how cliche it sounded to her. This new person she'd become fell into the sensation; chest to chest and fingers working up the back of his own neck, thumbing his jawline desperately.

It all felt like a cure-all - the antidote to whatever hateful poison had been consuming her.

The crystal ashtray slipped to the floor, clattering and as she breathed to kiss him deeper she could smell the tang of cigarette dust in the air while licking the flavor out of his mouth. It should have been a bit off-putting but she felt drunk the more she kissed him; less able-minded.

A soft but firm tug on the nape of her neck pulled her back, lips feeling raw and tingly. Nora felt high and bleary eyed as she gazed back at him. John looked back at her through open, bottomless pits.

“Been waitin’ forty years to do that,” he admitted with a voice coarse enough to scuff diamond. Nora couldn't stop the uncharacteristic blush from filling her cheeks and when she realized the heat was her skin going pink it spread and deepened until she lowered her eyes in embarrassment.

“Was it that bad?” He asked, half joking and the other half very vulnerable.

“No, it was...I never realized it could feel like that,” she hazarded a glance at him and found him looking back at her anxiously; guarded. She didn't blame him. He needed something else from her, but this was all uncharted territory for her.

“That a good or a bad thing?”

She swallowed, “Good. Very good, John.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the great comments on the last chapter. We've got one more after this. If you have the time please leave a comment or a kudo and thanks as always for reading. <3


	6. January - March

Sometimes it felt like nothing had changed. John acted the same most times, even when they were alone, but that just made her feel silly for missing all the obvious signs beforehand. He continued to flirt, just as casually as he did before. No, John hadn’t changed much except that she didn’t distance herself from him any longer and when she got caught up in her own mind, acting like a hormonal teenager, he shut her down quickly.

 

_ ”Maybe you can keep an eye on me. Talk me down when I start talking gibberish?” _

 

_ ”You ain't that bad, Nora. But yeah, sure, I'll keep you in check.” _

 

He'd done that and more over the past month. Once given free rein he never hesitated to pinch her arm or give her a silent glare, letting her know when she was straying far from herself. It didn't make her feel any better about some of the things she said or tried to get away with, but John's patience with her was a gift she cherished and yet didn't deserve.

 

When he finally fucked her, after a particularly long night arguing in her home about something she couldn't even remember, it was like making love and even though she’d never known what it felt like before, a part of her was sure that’s what it was when he did it. 

 

Sometimes the whole world dissolved around her, leaving just the two of them. Other times it was depraved and rough and the things he did to her - the words his touch made her say and feel - it had to have been frowned upon back in her time, or possibly even in this time as well. Nora couldn’t imagine a respectable woman begging for another, just one more round of whatever dish he decided to serve. But as much as she tried to deny it, she was a different woman than the one she'd been before and so, in turn, she felt different things. Her love for John was the most strange of them all.

 

Nora gave him a sidelong look across the balcony, remembering the way he laid her back on his desk the other night, stabbing her with low, deep thrusts. He stared at her all the while as he brought her to climax. John Hancock did things like that which jarred at first, in their newness, but in the end, she treasured these moments. Some part of her might even be scared it all a dream - the serum, him and the world around her.

 

Between her thighs, she still ached for him.

 

It made her blush like a young woman just thinking about it - made her forget she’d been old before. It was new, but if she’d lived life right before it wouldn’t have been. She’d wasted so much time the more she thought about it. There were moments where she could have taken John up on his offers, seen what he wanted, but she didn’t. Hadn't.

 

A warning voice tickled in her mind. She was close to running down a sullen path if she didn’t begin thinking about something else. In her pocket, she brushed her fingers along a soft paper edge.

 

John let out a breath of smoke across the open air; a near perfect gray ring disappearing into the space between them. When she dared another glance his way he was staring back at her, hot coals for eyes and a loose smile around the tip of his cigarette. Often she wondered if she was as readable as she felt sometimes, which in turn lead her to wonder how many times he knew she was thinking about him before they started this affair of theirs. Probably enough times that she should be embarrassed, though it was only recently her thoughts had turned lewd.

 

“What’re you thinkin’, Nora?”

 

She paused, blinking out across Scollay Square from her little vantage point on the edge of the palisade. Nora still expected to look out across the courtyard and find Deegan watching her on the balcony. The usuals were keeping watch, chatting up with their tommy guns and making open back-alley deals. She noted Curie outside the Memory Den, laughing with Kent before waving him inside, no doubt for another trip down memory lane.

 

John said her name again and she let out a cold breath before pulling the folded piece of paper out from her coat pocket. She stared at it for a moment before handing it over to him.

 

“Paperwork?” he teased, kicking his legs back up on the banister after taking the paper with a drugged smile. She didn’t need to look over at him to know what expression he wore - she could feel him grinning. “Well hello, beautiful. This what you been thumbin’ in your pocket all night?”

 

“Yeah,” she whispered, inhaling a lungful of smoke. Of course, he’d noticed. “What do you think?” she asked him, hoping for a positive answer.

 

“I think we oughta start gettin’ ready.”

 

Nora knew he’d be ready for an adventure...he always had been. With a saucy look, he wagged his brows at her, handing the paper back. The worn yellow page was ripped at the top but all the useful information was still legible. It had been hanging up in the market back at Boston Commons for a few days before she’d snatched it off the bulletin on her way back to Goodneighbor yesterday evening. Everyone still treated her like an old woman back home, passing her by for errands, missions and the like, so she’d snatched this up for herself. A bounty for a mean looking raider bitch with a penchant for eating caravan merchants. 

 

She wanted to gut the cunt; string her up for the crows to come for the carrion.

 

They left a few hours before morning. John helped her strap on pieces of combat armor over her vault suit, checking her ammo before securing it on her hip. She took it upon herself to check the sights on that beautiful old shotgun of his.

 

Nora could see something devious in his eyes as he watched her tie her shoe laces; a boot up on the coffee table. But he left her alone to double-check their supplies. It wasn’t a long trek, but it had been so long since they’d both walked into combat willingly that it never hurt to double and triple check everything.

 

All the prep work was unnecessary, though. They found the bitch before sunrise.

 

It felt grounding to kill again. A part of her knew it was wrong to derive so much enjoyment from putting down a human life but she’d long since lost sympathy for raiders. When you’ve seen them putting innocent people on meat hooks before disemboweling them with jokes and laughter, it was easy and, pleasurable even, to kill them. They were a particular stain on this earth and when she killed her first grunt she flashed John a manic look that should have stopped him cold, but instead he returned it tenfold before caving another’s skull in.

 

Bloodlust. The word even tasted bitter.

 

They used to do this when they were younger - when she was in her late twenties the first time around and he was only fifteen years into being a ghoul. He used to pretend the sight of the carnage disgusted him, but he’d always chuckle later as she picked the corpses clean of ammo and loot. Back in the day, they’d go weeks without seeing a friendly face, covered in blood and guts by the time they’d find a place welcoming enough to wash it all off.

 

When the bodies were stiff and she was yanking the rope on the raider boss that called herself Scissor, her and John exchanged a knowing look. They didn’t head back to Goodneighbor, just kept walking out west until the sun was up and their knees were sore. He let her roam away the day, clearing out ponds of Mirelurks and old shacks of ferals, knowing it was what she needed.

 

“Stop me now,” she told him as the dust cleared, surrounded by a gaggle of dead feral ghouls and one putrid one.

 

“Exorcise them demons, sweetheart. I’ll pull you back when ya look like you're gettin’ too far gone.”

 

That moment happened towards the end of the day when she was about ready to skim down a slope towards an establishment of raiders with stolen Brotherhood gear strapped to their bodies. John had warned her before she got too close, but she'd ignored him, thinking herself more aware of the dangers than him. He snarled and grabbed her around the elbow, fought her when she tried to shake him off and clamped a dirty palm over her mouth when she meant to bark at him. Offended and angry, she tried to fork him in the ribs but he twisted her like she weighed nothing and threw her in the dust beside an outcrop of trees. 

 

“Goddamnit, John! We’ve got enough rounds-” she was ready to argue, already on her hands and knees, eager to get up in his face but he wrapped a fist around the armor straps across her back, hauling her up a scant inch off the ground. Nora gasped, scrambling in the dirt as he dragged her across the undergrowth, further away from danger and a damn good time. Her heart was racing; adrenaline soaking in her veins and skin and brain until she was gathering dirt under her nails trying to get back into the fray of it.

 

John didn’t say a word the whole agonizing walk away from danger, just pulled her as she kicked and clawed through bushes and trees until all she could hear was her own panting snarls and his strained chuckle. 

 

He dropped her on a thin patch of grass and though she was quick, he was quicker. Nora wasn’t sure what he was doing until her breastplate was unhooked and on the ground a few feet away. 

 

Once realization dawn on her she let out a shaking groan; helping him get her out of her armor. It didn’t take long to take the suit down around her hips and eventually around her knees. John flipped her back on her stomach, letting her naked breasts press into the cold earth as he lifted her rear end up and sank inside her. The fight had gotten her wet, but the short time it took to disrobe had her soaked. It was one of those times where the love they had for each other became something manic and primal. Nora needed it and John, ever astute, knew it.

 

“God, John,” she gasped, ripping up grass in her curled fists when he gave a particularly hard thrust, bottoming out. If he wanted to make it hurt he could, that cock of his was dangerous under the right circumstances and when she sobbed underneath him he went all the harder. Just what she needed.

 

He fucked the rest of that restless energy out of her. After cumming twice, he finally pressed her on her back, shoving her thighs against her chest before finishing himself; snarling at the sight of his cock buried inside her cunt. It was all quite different than what she was used to - this was the first time he’d fucked her out in the open and so mercilessly. John was a noisy lover, always talking dirty or asking her how it felt, but as she laid back swallowing breathes she couldn’t remember him saying a word the whole time.

 

“Thank you,” she managed after a couple minutes. John panted beside her, spread out on his back with his cock softening against his thigh, unable it seemed to speak but nodded and grinned in reassurance when she kept staring up at him; waiting.

 

When he was finally zipping her suit back he leaned in a kissed her softly, washing away the lingering brutality. They shared a cigarette against a rocky wall of roots and clay, her head draped over his shoulder. Nora was bone tired; her legs laid out worthlessly against John’s and yet she'd never felt more alive.

 

“I would have gotten us both killed,” she mused, letting her eyes close as he took the cigarette from between her loose lips. Beside her, she felt John chuckle silently.

 

“I doubt that. Just maimed, maybe. How you feelin’, though?”

 

Nora blinked lazily, feeling the warm afterglow of sex warming her up even though the air temperature was plummeting under the fading sun. The gentle rush of nicotine inside her skull heightened the high she felt. She looked up at her, rolling her eyes to catch his lowered look and smirked, “Like a certain ghoul had his way with me in the forest. Feels like you cum's given me a contact high."

 

That made him laugh, full chested and ragged like a buzzsaw, “Shame that is. You must be trippin' balls after that nasty business.”

 

“A bit,” she agreed, kissing his shoulder through his frock coat seams. 

 

If John could keep her from fucking things up for the next four or six years until her mind evened out then they could have a good time of cleansing the wasteland. Nora imagined spending all eternity fixing the world with him and chuckled, kicking his boot with her own until he pushed the tip of the smoke back between her lips and gave her cheek a dry kiss.

 

\----------------

 

Sanctuary had been warned about her weeks before she got herself there. It took most of a crisp March morning, hanging off the end of a caravan, to get there. John was wistfully walking behind the Brahmin, playing with his old combat knife, exchanging jocular banter with her as they went. 

 

“Give me a little peek while you're sittin’ there,” he taunted as his eyes roamed down between her legs that were splayed comfortably over the edge of the caravan cart. John had convinced her to wear a housewife's dress for the journey. That night she'd complained about her last pair of underwear mysteriously disappearing. 

 

A part of her was paranoid it'd been Deegan fucking with her, and while the ghoul may have been a bit more of a letch than she'd thought, he wasn't a creep. It was probably Hancock being a tease, but it was hard to think John could do any harm with the state of lovesickness she found herself in.

 

John told her the jeans she'd picked out for the journey wouldn't work without her ‘prissy panties’. She couldn't remember the exact details ‘cause of the drinks they'd shared last night, but she could recall enough to know he'd made a compelling argument and so she glared at him as the hem of her dress fluttered along her shins. 

 

“You've gone mad as a hatter if you think I'm going to do that, right now.”

 

“Not sure what a hatter is but I'm mad for a glimpse of the good stuff for sure and ya can't blame a ghoul for tryin’,” he told her, flipping his knife in the air in a way that made her heart leap in her throat, but John was a man of ease and he caught it nimbly, flicking it up to balance on his finger. His prideful smirk made her simper despite herself. Another mock glare sent his way made his leer bloom into a toothy grin. 

 

“I can't believe I'm doing this,” she mused, feeling the worn wood of the caravan under her palms. 

 

John chuffed at her, licking his teeth, “You afraid everyone's gonna throw you up on a pyre and roast ya for replacing their dear departed leader? Because, if so, you got nothin’ to worry about with me watchin’ your ass.”

 

Nora sighed, feeling anxious again even though she'd placed a strong ‘tat under her tongue an hour ago, “I don't know. Maybe I am worried about something like that. Can you blame me?”

 

“Nah,” John breathed, gliding his hand back, knife dropping, only to catch it in midair. 

 

He jogged up to her and threw himself upon the edge beside her. The cart swayed slightly, and behind her, she could hear one head of the Brahmin snort. John snaked an arm around her waist and suddenly her body was warm again and she forgot some of her nerves. A love sick fool indeed. Everything still felt so much more intense than it ought to, but what she felt for John didn’t bother her...not when she breathed and ignored her hormonal monolog.

 

“It seems I can't blame you for anything these days,” he told her, rasping against her neck,” ‘specially not for this shit. But they've been warned. Rumors have been buzzin’ for a few months anyway. It'll be fine, sunshine.”

 

He was reassuring - as much as he could be, but a part of her still felt...worried. 

 

“I ain't got any more ‘tats on me, but if you want, I know somethin’ that'll calm you down,” he roughly whispered in her ear; hot breath coasting down the collar of her thick jacket. Knowing John it was something devious, and she'd been wary of his silver tongue ever since she first met him. Now that he knew how she felt she was a bit concerned he'd talk her into something like, well...something he was probably about to talk her into. 

 

“What did you have in mind?” Nora asked. Shouldn't have asked. She should have laughed him off and kept her legs closed but she responded with a breathy tone and by the sound John made in his throat he was gonna take that as an offer to show rather than tell. 

 

The first touch of his hand on her thigh made her stomach flip. 

 

He hiked up the thin material of her dress - the cold air stung on her knees and when it breezed up between her thighs she hissed. 

 

Nervously her eyes skimmed in front of her, watching nothing but a line of abandoned homes and overgrowth passing them by. This was the most pointlessly dangerous thing she'd done willingly in a while, but when John urged her leg up over his knee, she followed his lead eagerly, exposing herself to anyone who would happen across them. 

 

She had allowed herself to enjoy her brief fling with Deegan but he'd never got her heart racing like John did. It scared her at first, so used to being old and worried that a fast heart would be the precursor to a heart attack. 

 

“What are we going to do if someone decides to check in the back for the sounds that are definitely not innocent?” she whispered under her breath, staring down at the dark blue fabric bunching around his wrist. The first touch over her wet cunt made her moan; unthinking. 

 

“Come on now, Nora. You know the drill, just keep quiet. Bite those sweet lips of yours...unless of course ya wanna get caught with my hand up your skirts,” he soothed roughly against her, so close his lips tickled the shell of her ear. "It's fine by me either way." 

 

She kept quiet. Nora was always good at taking pain without a sound and the same resolve could be applied to pleasure. It wasn’t easy, but as John worried her neck with his teeth and his fingers played wetly between her thighs, she managed it somehow.

 

“I wonder,” she muttered between breaths, “if you’d be this attentive if I were a ghoul.”

 

John growled, “Would that go both ways? You tellin’ me you’d like me better if I was a smoothie? ‘Cause you're still the same on the inside.”

 

“That’s not-” she swallowed a sharp moan as he shoved two fingers inside her, pulling out moisture to swipe furiously along her clit. John did it again and again until she could feel the wind cooling the mess that leaked down her inner thighs, darkening the wood grain. 

 

“Ignore me, John,” she sighed.

 

“Oh, don’t you worry,” his fingers played her until she was making music despite how hard she ran her teeth into her tongue, “I’m gonna fuck that nonsense outta you later, for now just close that mouth of yours - forget about the bullshit and come for me.”

 

She did. After pressing down those frivolous emotions - the insecurities and make-believe drama - she spread her thighs wider, braced her palms flat along the wooden caravan bench and exhaled through a deep orgasm. The waves like warm summer water flooding and flowing up and down her body. A damp sweat broke out on her forehead, and as the pleasure ebbed she was left wearing a wide, contented smile.

 

”Good girl,” he told her, kissing her temple softly as he pushed her skirts down over her knees; keeping out the cold.

 

Nora swayed against him the rest of the journey, smiling softly as John played with the ends of her hair, chain smoking when he wasn’t busy checking in on her. Always better to her than she deserved. Even back in the day when she was ignorant of his feelings she'd been hard on him at times. Maybe distant. He needed her warm as much as she needed it herself. Nora could be warm for him. Had to be. 

 

She gave him a delicate kiss once he flicked the burnt smoke into the cracked asphalt. The way he pulled at the roots of her hair, urging her lips into a sweet angle took her breath away but when her palm slid down the buttons of his vest he snatched up her wrist and broke their kiss. 

 

“Keep that up and I'll be struttin’ around with an arrow pointing at you all day,” he warned her, giving her a lazy grin that radiated in the sun -some of the moisture from her mouth, gleaming along his thin lower lip. 

 

Nora returned the look, “Thanks, John.”

 

“Hey, anytime you need a little finger fuckin' I'm your man.”

 

“No,” she whispered, still unable to stop beaming, “Thank you for being the voice of reason I lost.”

 

John gave her a calculating look before rubbing his rough thumb over the knot of her wrist, “Can't say there isn't something hot about your lack of reason, but you're welcome.” And then as if he knew something she didn't, he tugged her close despite the rocking of the caravan and told her softly, “It won't always feel like this ya know...you'll feel normal again one ‘ave these days.”

 

She nodded, knowing he was right. 

 

Sanctuary was a monstrous settlement that ran its way up the same hill she took so many decades ago with Nate and her baby boy. It had expanded down into the Vault fifteen years ago but most of the people she knew still loved her old neighborhood and called the place their home.

 

Preston’s daughter waved them in, and somewhere down the road, she could see one of his three sons helping a group of people throw up a new relay tower. Nora spotted the old one on its side on the footpath, burnt black as if it caught fire. 

 

“General?” Melanie Garvey asked her from under the brim of a faded cowboy hat. Her oldest brother inherited their father's trademark hat, but the girl had found her own and wore it better than her dad had his own at times. Ms. Garvey bore the same look many people had given her. Like they'd seen a ghost. Nora couldn't blame her.

 

“It's me, only been six months and yet it feels like a lifetime,” Nora laughed the words at the end; a nervous energy settling between her ribs. 

 

She slid off the caravan, feeling the hard street under her boots with something akin to satisfaction. John kicked up a leg as he sat, smoking a cigarette and watching them with a tip of his hat - the picture of calm even though she knew his stance was used to hide his deflating erection.

 

“General…” Melanie repeated in awe; lips parted, “I heard from Valentine but reading it in a letter is one thing. You look younger than me.”

 

“Not by much,” Nora mused with a muted smile. 

 

Their welcome was strange in its length and level of tension. Some of them looked at her like they never knew her before...while most just saluted and went on their way. It felt odd being back.

 

She spotted an old lady sitting in what used to be Mama Murphy’s chair and Nora was struck with a hard punch of nostalgia. John was making friends with the bar owner a few houses down but he noticed the color drain out of her face and threw her a sympathetic look. 

 

Sturges used to run the bar where John hung his hat; elbow on the counter, but since his death she wasn't sure who had taken the shack under their wing. It wasn't the only place to get a drink in this town though and most certainly not the best, but by the looks of it, John was staking claim to it. She could already see a beer in his hand as he drew in a crowd with tales and legends no doubt. It made her smile, but being back made her feel more sour than anything.

 

She found Codsworth down by the water, welding a new fitting on one of the water filters. One of his eye stalks twisted and turned; metal shrinking and optics expanding as if sensing her particular heartbeat.

 

“Miss Nora! Oh, good heavens!” 

 

The old tin can breezed up the yard towards her, burning wrinkled grass underneath him as he sped forth. Codsworth waved his arms around him, curling the buzzsaw back into its safety bearings. At the last second, the flame at his torch extinguished before he singed her hair off. If he was huggable she’d have done it, but instead, she settled for a warm smile and a hello. 

 

“Good to see you again, Codsworth.”

 

“My, you don’t look a day older than when you first calibrated my cyber optics. Minus those dirty clothes if you don’t mind my say so. Would you be interested in a wash while you’re here?”

 

If a robot could ever look hopeful then Codsworth tried. Nora smiled, a real one finally since stepping foot in Sanctuary. Sure, she told him, but only after she got settled. 

 

It was over half a year since she'd last been here and by the looks of it, they hadn’t needed her much. Her job the last ten years had been to delegate most of the heavy lifting to the younger generation. First, it had been minutemen and settlers she sent in place of herself to scout and clear out pockets of hostility, next had been those that sent them out and then...then it had been appointing people like Melanie Garvey, who ran her settlements without her. Nora wanted to feel needed again, but she’d done a good job securing everything for when she wasn’t around anymore. There was no sense in disrupting all that. 

 

Nora rested around the water pumps with Codsworth until the old stories from before the war started to get to her. Those memories felt like they belonged to a different person and had for many years. She was polite in telling him to shut up, but no matter how sweet she was to him he was always sad to see her go. Maybe she’d offer for him to come back to Boston Commons with her and John, but she knew deep down that he needed to be here. If this place was to keep growing the way it needed to then they needed someone who remembers what it was like before.

 

Melanie may have run this place but it was unofficially Codsworth’s settlement and everyone still knew that and would continue to, she hoped. Time was never a certainty. One would think she’d have learned that earlier than now…

 

When the sun was at its zenith Nora found herself strolling through town with Codsworth always several feet behind her. She’d look back and the Mr. Handy would pretend to be snipping hedges or blowing leaves off the sidewalks. It was pleasant and though not many people did much more than stop and stare at her, she felt less tense than when they’d first arrived.

 

She found John at the bar still, surrounded by settlers and a few minutemen with wide, envious eyes. 

 

“-must’ave been about forty of those fuckers sprouting out of the muck like hubflowers; drippin’ maws everywhere and the smell! Christ, ya just don’t know how good you smell when you’re starin down a cluster of ‘lurks in the middle of summer.”

 

Nora hung back by the entrance, watching John through the crowd as he retold an embellished tale of their defeat of the Mirelurk Queen over thirty-five years ago in Far Harbor. It had been mid-fall, and they’d planned the whole thing with nary a variable not thought on. The whole ordeal had lasted ten minutes tops and the hatchlings had been the worst of them. If the serum hadn’t taken away her scars she’d have proof of their nasty bites, but the memory was proof enough she figured.

 

There were gasps and cheers and almost as though it were planned, the jukebox kicked up at the end and the bar descended in music and shouting. Nora smiled, ignoring that little voice inside that wanted her envious of John’s ease; sour at all the smiling faces that just didn’t understand. 

 

She was halfway back down the street, ready to make the trip up the hill when John appeared beside her, kicking up leaves by the sidewalk, “How’s that head of yours doin?”

 

Nora was startled for only a second before she huffed, elbowing him gently, “I’m fine...it’s not that bad. You can forget about me for a few minutes you know.”

 

He barked a laugh, searching in his pockets for a half-empty shooter of jet, “Would if I could, sweetcheeks. You’ve been on my mind longer than’s healthy. Not sure I’d have it any other way, though, you keep life exciting. Always have.”

 

“I appreciate that, but exciting can get tiring,” she mused, shoving her cold fingers in her jacket pockets. A breeze blew and she was reminded that she wasn’t wearing any underwear - it made her cheeks pinken.

 

“Naw,” John breathed, inhaling a deep lungful of jet before growling playfully, “if you’re gonna live forever you gotta stop thinkin’ like that. We’ll sleep when we’re dead and all that.”

 

“I can only hope you mean figuratively because something about today has been rather exhausting.”

 

“Of course. Figuratively,” he grinned, offering her the red shooter with a turn of his brow. She spared a glance around them, pulled at his frock until they were nestled behind some dead trees and took the canister from his hand with a thankful smile. They got high in the bushes, both of their shoulders shoved up against the trunk of the tree, sharing breath as the jet extended time. 

 

Her eyes blinked oh so slowly as his beautifully rough fingers stroked down the front of her throat. She was ready for it when he leaned down and kissed her - the press of his mouth to her full lips going on forever and ever it seemed. 

 

“I wanna fuck you right here,” he told her - his voice sounding long and ragged and deep enough she could feel it in her belly. They couldn’t, but she nipped at his thin lower lip anyways and pressed her fingers between his linen dress shirt and the trademark flag belt. He sucked in a breath, allowing her hands to glide between cloth until the warmth of his scarred skin heated her frozen fingers. John hissed, from the cold of her skin or the tight grip she wrapped around his cock she wasn’t sure. But he opened his mouth and repaid her in kisses and bites as she worked her fist around his cock regardless. 

 

The desperate way he stroked his uneven palms over her jaw and neck, tipping her back to be devoured, only heightened the effects of the jet until she felt like they were hovering above the ground. She stroked him up and down, twisting and thumbing that steel knot while her other hand rested flat along his spine, holding him close.

 

“Gettin’ close, Nora,” he groaned against her lips, hissing as she squeezed. Hurriedly, she pulled her lips off his, eyeing the pathway. The brush and the town below them were empty enough. As he raked his teeth along her jawline; panting she said, “Screw it.”

 

No one was in sight, so she dropped to her knees - leaves crunching under her and the damp ground soaking through her dress. John helped her pull out the knot in his flag, wheezing unevenly and murmuring filth down at her. She blew out a breath, licked her lips and swallowed him down as soon as he was free of the fabric. The taste of him sent a dull bolt down her stomach and, almost greedily, she sucked him further until his fingers were tangled in her hair and he was hissing her name between his teeth, cumming down her throat. 

 

They paused like that only for the second it took her gulp his orgasm down.

 

John chuckled after helping her to her feet, swiping a thumb along her lower lip where some cum had escaped. Like a filthy dream, he cleaned off his thumb with a languid lick and kissed her, tongue raking the roof of her mouth. It was always like this with John. He was always free and easy and calming. Like a rock. A life preserver. A port in the storm, she thought. 

 

They strolled up the hill after another couple hits of jet, finishing off the shooter with twin grins. That night they slept like the dead in one of the empty shacks by the gates, wrapped around each other as the darkness tried to chill their bones but failed. Nora didn’t sleep well usually, even with John beside her, but that night she did and when she woke up it was with an easier transition into the world than the previous day.

 

Progress, she thought...and kissed John until he woke up for the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We've reached the end! Thank you for all the kudos, comments and readers that took the time to get to the finish line. Now I can get working on some other stuff and check this little thing off my list. Comment if you have the time. They make me smile. <3

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr ----> http://brimbrimbrimbrim.tumblr.com/


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